UNIVERSITY  i 
AT   LOS 


y 


a- 


' 


SHELLEY: 


THE    MAN    AND    THE    POET. 


FELIX     RABBE, 


CHICAGO  : 
A.    C.    McCLURG    AND    COMPANY. 


CHARLES   DICKENS   AND  EVANS, 
CRYSTAL   PALACE   PRESS. 


0) 

ta 

c 

o 


TO    MADAME    E.    DE    C . 

In  the  name  of  our  old  friendship  I  venture  to  dedicate 
to  you  this  Monograph  on  Shelley,  as  to  one  whom 
the  poet  himself  would  have  loved,  and  whom  he 
would  have  recognised  as  one  of  those  souls  which 
are  sisters  through  their  love  of  the  True  and  the 
Beautiful  ;    members  of 

"  All  that  band  of  suter  spirits  known 
To  one  another  by  a  voiceless  tone." 

F.  RABBE. 


B  417434 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER     I. 

EARLY    YEARS     OF    SHELLEY— FIELD     PLACE— BRENT- 
FORD—1792-1805     


PAGE 
I 


12 


CHAPTER    II. 

SHELLEY   AT   ETON— 1 S04-1S09 3^ 

CHAPTER    III. 

SHELLEY   AS    A   \VRITER    OF    ROMANCE— "  ZASTROZZI  " 

—"ST.    IRVYNE"— 1809-1810 42 

CHAPTER   IV. 

FIRST   POETICAL   ESSAYS   AND  FIRST  LOVE— 1809-IS1O         59 

CHAPTER  V. 

SHELLEY    AT    OXFORD— "  NECESSITY'  OF    ATHEISM"  — 

181O-18U  ,      -    .  .   ■        .  .     -      .  •  '        70 


vi  CO.XTENTS. 

CHAPTER    VI. 

PAGE 

SHELLEY  IN  LONDON,  AT  FIELD  PLACE,  AND  AT 
CWM  ELAN — ELOPEMENT  WITH  HARRIET  WEST- 
BROOK— 181I    Q2 


CHAPTER  VII. 

SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH,  YORK,  AND  KESWICK— 
MOMENTARY  RUPTURE  WITH  HOGG— SHELLEY 
AND    SOUTHEY— 1811-1812 Ill 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

SIIFI.LEY  AND  GODWIN —SHELLEY  IN  IRELAND- 
IRISH   PAMPHLETS— 18 12 1 32 

CHAPTER    IX. 

SHELLEY  IN  WALES— AT  NANTGWILT— IN  NORTH 
DEVON— IN  LONDON— AT  TANVRALT— AT  LYN- 
TON— LETTERS  TO  GODWIN — "QUEEN  MAB  "— 
1812-1S13 158 

CHAPTER   X. 

SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN— IN  LONDON— AT  BRACKNELL_ 
EDINBURGH,  WINDSOR— HIS  SEPARATION  FROM 
HARRIET— 1813-1S14 180 

CHAPTER    XI. 

*' HISTORY    OF    A    SIX    WEEKS     TOUR"  —  JOURNAL    OF 

SHELLEY  AND   MARY — 1814  ....      209 


{ 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   XII. 


SHELLEY      IN      LONDON      AND      AT      BISH0P3GATE  — 

"ALA.STOR"— 1814-1816  .  .  .  .  5-25 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

JOURNEY     TO     AND     SOJOURN     IN     SWITZERLAND- 
SHELLEY  AND   BYRON 2  40 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

SHELLEY  AT  BATH  —  SUICIDE  OF  HARRIET  AND 
MARRIAGE  OF  SHELLEY  —  THE  HERMIT  OF 
MARLOW  —  "LAON  AND  CYTHNA"  —  "  PRINCE 
ATHANASIUS  "  —  ADDRESS  TO  THE  ENGLISH 
PEOPLE — 1816-181S  .  .  .  .  .  .      263 

CHAPTER  XV. 

SHELLEY  IN  ITALY — MILAN,  LEGHORN,  LUCCA,  VENICE, 
THE  CAPUCHINS,  FLORENCE,  AND  PADUA  — 
"  ROSALIND  AND  HELEN,"  AND  "  JULIAN  AND 
MADDALO" — 1818 284 

CHAPTER   XVI. 

SHELLEY   IN   ITALY — ROME   AND   NAPLES— 1818-1819  .      302 

CHAPTER   XVII. 

SHELLEY  IN  ITALY— LEGHORN  AND  FLORENCE — 
"THECENCI"  —  "peter  bell  THE  THIRD"  — 
"PROMETHEUS   UNBOUND  "—18 19  .  .  317 


viii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

PAGE 

SHELLEY  IN  ITALY — PISA— LEGHORN — THE  BATHS 
OF  ST.  GIULIANO — LETTER  TO  MARIA  GISBORNE— 
"hymn  TO  MERCURY" — "THE  WITCH  OF  ATLAS" 
—SHELLEY  AND   KEATS— "  ADONAIS  "— 1820  .      339 

CHAPTER   XIX. 

SHELLEY  IN  ITALY — PISA  AND  RAVENNA — EMILIA 
VIVIANI  AND  THE  "  EPIPSYCHIDION  " — "a  DE- 
FENCE OF  POETRY" — "HELLAS" — "  CHARLES  I." 
—  182I 357 

CHAPTER   XX. 

SHELLEY  AT  PISA  AND  AT  CASA  MAGNI— HIS  DEATH 
AND  FUNERAL  PYRE — "  (rHE-ÇRm^IPHOFJLlf:Ê^ 

379 


— 1822 


APPENDIX. 

FRAGMENT  OF  "  ST.   IRVYNE" 403 

LETTER  TO  GODWIN   ON  CLASSICAL  EDUCATION.  .      407 

LAST  SCENE    OF  THE    FIRST   ACT  OF  "THE    HAIR   OF 

ABSALOM,"  BY  CALDERON 4IO 


SHELLEY: 

THE    MAN    AND   THE    POET. 


INTRODUCTION. 

Byron,  conversing  with  Shelley  in  literary  mood» 
admitted  frankly  that  until  that  time  he  had 
written  for  women  readers  only,  but  that  when 
he  should  have  reached  the  age  of  forty  he 
intended  to  change  his  tactics,  and  to  show  man- 
kind what  he  was  capable  of  doing.  Shelley 
replied  :  "  Do  it  at  once  ;  write  nothing  but  with 
conviction  of  its  truth.  You  should  teach  the 
wise,  not  learn  I'rom  the  foolish.  Time  will 
reverse  the  verdict  of  the  crowd.  Contemporary 
criticism  merely  represents  the  amount  of  igno- 
rance that  must  be  encountered  by  genius." 

Time  has  proved  Shelley  to  be  in  the  right  ; 
the  verdict  of  the  crowd  has  been  reversed,  and 
Shelley's  poetry  will  endure  while  the  English 
language  lasts. 

More  than  thirty  years  ago  an  English  critic 
testified  to  the  profound  influence  of  his  genius 
on  contemporary  poets.  "  Imitation  of  Shelley 
is  obvious,"  wrote  one  of  his  biographers  in 
1850,  "in  the  majority  of  the  eminent  poets  of 
this   century."      That    his    influence   has    become 

B 


2  SHELLEY- THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

even  more  marked  since  then  is  sufficiently  proved 
by  naming  Tennyson,  Browning,  and  Swinburne. 

Wliile  the  name  of  Shelley  was  growing  great 
in  his  native  land  and  becoming  a  synonym  for 
Poetry,  while  his  verse  was  translated  in  Germany, 
Italy,  and  Spain,  and  found  its  way  into  America, 
France  remained  almost  in  ignorance  of  his 
powers  ;  or  if  he  sometimes  received  a  passing 
tribute  in  periodical  literature,  such  superficial 
articles  contained  little  beyond  a  more  or  less 
romantic  biography  of  the  poet,  or  vague  com- 
monplaces concerning  his  genius.*  His  works 
remained  all  but  unknown  and  unappreciated, 
and  one  of  the  deepest  thinkers  of  the  age  was 
looked  upon  as  a  second  or  third-class  Chatterton, 
an  extravagant  and  unproductive  dreamer,  capable 
at  the  utmost  of  supplying  a  few  trivialities  to 
the  keepsake  literature  of  the  day. 

But  the  moment  seems  to  have  arrived  for 
France  to  do  justice  to  the  author  of  "  Alastor," 
"  Prometheus  Unbound,''  "  Hellas,"  "  The  Cenci," 
and  so  many  other  magnificent  poems,  a  single 
one  of  which  would  suffice  to  establish  a  poet's 
fame  for  ever.  From  every  quarter  of  the 
literary  world  attention  is  at  length  aroused  to  a 
poet  greater  than  Byron,  but  who  had  not  found 
translation  into  French,  when  renderings  of 
'■'  Childe  Harold  "  and  "  Don  Juan  "  were  already 
innumerable.t     It  must  be  admitted  that  at  the 

*  An  exception  must  be  made  in  favour  of  M.  Odysse 
Barot's  "  Étude,''  in  the  Revue  Co)itemporaine^  November  and 
December,  1S67.  That  article,  notwithstanding  its  inac- 
curacies and  omissions,  is  the  most  appreciative  work  on 
Shelley  that  has  as  yet  been  published  in  France. 

t  Now  that  French  critics  are  more  appreciative  of  Shelley 
and  his  works,  some  excellent  essays  on  his  character  and 
genius,  and  on  some  of  his  poems,  have  appeared,  viz.  :  An 
article  from  the  pen  of  M.  Schurc  in  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  for  ist  Februarj^,  1877  ;  an  excellent  chapter  by 
M.  Darmesteter,  in  his  "Essais  de  Littérature  Anglaise;" 


INTRODUCTION.  3 

present  time  the  design  of  making  such  a  poet 
as  Shelley  known  in  France  may  seem  some- 
what rash_,  and  that  the  editor  of  a  Traduction 
Complète  of  his  poems  must  possess  a  certain 
amount  of  boldness  and  courage.  Setting  aside 
his  title  of  poet,  he  is  so  exceptional  a  genius, 
so  completely  at  variance  with  his  epoch,  so 
far  removed  from  the  positive,  utilitarian,  and 
realistic  ideas  by  which  it  is  absorbed,  that  the 
question  may  be  fairly  put  :  What  have  we 
to  do  with  such  dreamers  ?  What  good  end 
can  be  served  by  a  revolutionary  and  humani- 
tarian Milton  or  Shakespeare?  Intellectual  and 
moral  progress,  the  reign  of  Justice  and  Right, 
love  towards  all  who  suffer  and  weep  on  earth, 
the  Beautiful,  the  Grood,  the  Divine,  the  Ideal  in 
Nature,  in  Art,  and  in  Society — we  have  abolished 
all  such  follies  ! 

Clearly  it  is  not  to  these  Boeotians  of  the 
nineteenth  century  that  Shelley  speaks.  More 
than  any  other  human  being  he  belongs  to  that 
race  of  mankind  (living  anachronisms)  who,  find- 
ing nothing  around  them  worthy  of  their  song, 
elevate  themselves,  by  one  superhuman  stroke  of 
their  wings,  above  the  conditions  and  conventions 
of  the  visible  world.  Their  eyes  are  fixed  ex- 
clusively on  a  world  of  thought  and  spirit,  on 
eternal  ideas  that  are  infinitely  more  real  and  true 
to  them  than  the  ephemeral  phantasmagoria  of  the 
phenomena  of  space  and  time^  because  they  are 
the  primordial  laws  of  humanity,  the  divine 
spark  in  man,  and  guide  him,  in  spite  of  him- 
self, to  his  mysterious  ends.     Happier  than  other 

and  a  thoughtful  and  appreciative  study  of  "  The  Ccnci  ''  in 
M.  Sarrazin's  work,  "  Poètes  Modernes  de  l'Angleterre.''  p-rom 
M.  Taine,  in  his  "Histoire  de  la  Littérature  Anglaise,"  we 
might  have  expected  criticism  more  worthy  of  the  genius 
of  Shelley,  and  of  his  very  great  influence  on  English  poetry 
in  this  century. 

B    2 


4      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

poets,  perchance  no  less  gifted  than  he  had  they 
likewise  possessed  his  faith,  he  never  suffered 
shipwreck  on  the  rocks  of  doubt  and  despair; 
he  stands  at  the  antipodes  of  scepticism,  misan- 
thropy, and  soHtary,  fruitless  melancholy  —  a 
clarion-voice  of  faith,  hope,  and  love.  ''Give 
me  but  a  lever,"  he  exclaims  with  Archimedes, 
"and  I  will  move  the  world."  And  as  he  was 
convinced  that  such  a  lever  could  never  be 
found  among  fragile  and  perishable  things,  he 
sought  it  in  the  only  faculty  which  escapes  the 
attacks  of  circumstance  and  time — the  unconquer- 
able strength  of  man's  spirit  and  his  will, 
emanating  from  that  universal  spirit  in  Nature 
which  is  God.  _ln_this.^jiise  he  maj  be  termed, 
the__most^_ spiritual,  the  most  ideal,  the^rnoât^ 
religiojas.  of  poets.  -  His  atheism,  or  pantheism, 
whichever  we  may  choose  to  call  it,  is  but  an 
act  of  faith  in  that  divine  something  that  his 
soul  felt  within  herself  when  communing  with 
Nature.  If,  in  this  high  sense,  he  is  the  most  _ 
rd^igious  of  poets,  he  is  also,  in  the  strongest 
acceptation  of  the  term,  the  most  inspired  ;  and 
it  is  to  him,  if  to  any  one  among "fnoderrTTpoets, 
we  may  apply  the  name  of  vaies.  He  sees, 
perceives,^  and_,  ieels  what  he  sings  ;  an3'""Tlie 
spirit,  as  he  was  wont  to  repeat,  becoming 
like  unto  the  object  of  its  contemplation,  he  is 
transformed  into  his  own  conceptions  ;  the  spirit 
of  Nature  becomes  incarnate  within  him  ;  he  is 
like  unto  a  seer  and  a  prophet;  at  times  he  is 
an  echo  of  Job,  Isaiah,  and.  Christ. 

When  Jhus  inspired,  the  abstract  becomes 
visible  ;  allegory  is  real  ;  metaphysics  are  trans- 
formed into  a  living  mythology,  "a  splendid 
Pantheon,"  as  Macaulay  says.  An  impassioneii 
and  living  idealism  is  the  keynote  of  the  poetry 
of  Shelley. 

He  possesses  in  a  more  marked  degree  than 


INTRODUCTION.  5 

any  other   poet  of  our  time  a  warmth  and  ten: 

derness  of.  hearty.,  a   l.oye  of  mankind j,^  unequalled 
m~expression  save  by  SI-TalTespeare  ;   it  is  a  love 
tlTat     attains     to     heroism,    to     self -sacrifice,"    to  "" 
iTraffyrdom. 

"Tt  has  been  well  remarked  by  one  of  our 
young  French  poets,  *  who  has  more  than  one 
point  of  resemblance  to  Shelley  :  "  Both  Shake-  j 
speare  and  Shelley  have  sucked  the  milk  of  human  | 
kindness,  their  wide  sympathies  embrace  all  ages  \ 
and  every  people  ;  no  form  of  religion  can  contain  J 
them,  they  overflow  with  nature  and  humanity/'      -^ 

AH  Shelley's  morality  and  philosophy  may  be  ^ 
summed  up  in  one  word — Love;  but  it  is  love^ 
m  its  highest  and  most  ideal  acceptation,  as  it 
was  understood  by  Plato,  Jesus,  and  Dante,  the 
love  that  consists  in  the  universal  attraction  of 
all  beings,  the  shining  of  the  Everlasting  Beauty 
in  the  soul  of  man,  the  explanation  of  life  ;  it 
is  love  as  set  forth  not  long  ago  by  one  of  the 
few  Platonists  of  this  century,  when  he  wrote 
concerning  a  dialogue  not  understood  by  the 
Pharisees  of  our  day,  and  being  filled  with 
the  spirit  of  Phœdrus  and  the  Banquet,  ex- 
claimed :  "  Love  is  the  real  Orpheus I  am 

convinced  it  will  hold  an  important  place  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  future."  When  the  day  shall 
have  come  for  Shelley's  poems  to  be,  I  do  not 
say  popular,  but  understood  and  appreciated  by 
delicate  and  pure  minds,  M.  Kenan's  desideratum 
will  not  be  far  from  realisation. 

Michelet,  in  his  fine  work,  "  La  Mer,"  describes 
two  kinds  of  melancholy  or  sadness  :  the  one  ap- 
pertaining to  women,  the  other  to  strong  men — 
the  one  peculiar  to  sensitive  souls  who  weep 
for   themselves,    and    the    other    to    the    unselfish 

*  Maurice  Bouchor,  "Notice  sur  Shelley"  {Revue  des 
Chcfs-cfœuijye,  lo  Février,  1884)  ;  also  an  article  in  the 
Passant,  5th  January,  1887. 


6      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

hearts  wlio  accept  their  own  lot  and  always  bless 
Nature,  but  who,  at  the  same  time,  are  pained 
by  the  evils  in  the  worlds  and  draw  strength  to 
resist  and  act  from  their  very  sufferings. 

It  may  be  affirmed  that  the  soul  of  Shelley 
was  stricken  by  both  these  forms  of  sadness,  but 
that  which  dominates  is  the  second,  the  heroic 
melancholy  which  is  born  of  sympathy  with  all 
the  sorrows  of  humanity,  and  of  despair  at  being 
unable  to  apply  a  remedy. 

Like  all  great  souls  who  are  devoted  to  the 
progress  and  happiness  of  the  human  race,  Shelley_ 
dreamed  of  a  new  golden  age,  of  a  universal 
regeneration,  whose  dawn  will  appear  when  man- 
shall  cast  off  his  borrowed  nature,  and  become 
once  m.ore  his  true  self. 

At  an  age  when,  generally  speaking,  life  pre- 
sents itself  in  smiling  garb,  Shelley  was  deegly,_ 
rnoved  at  the  sight  of  the  evil  in  the  worldTand 
told  himself  that  all  the  active  forces  of  the  human 
intellect  should  tend  to  lessen  if  not  to  eliminate 
it  altogether  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  to  turn,, 
as  he  often  said,  this  world  into  a  heaven  ;  that 
if  religions,  traditional  philosophy,  and  political 
institutions  are  incapable  of  obtaining  this  result, 
it  is  because  they  systematically  deviate  from 
those  great  moral  and  natural  principles  which 
are  the  foundation  of  every  truly  human  and 
progressive  idea  ;  that  to  Poetry  alone,  therefore, 
belongs  the  duty  of  creating  anew,  as  it  were, 
the  understanding  and  the  heart  of  man,  which 
have  been  misled  and  disfigured  by  prejudice, 
habit,  and  servile  obedience,  each  and  all  the 
tainted  fruits  of  egotism.  Poetry  alone,  that  is 
to  say  Inspiration  (which  is  but  the  echo  of  the 
grëaT  "voice  of  ligature  in  the  soul  of  the  poet) 
can  mount  to  the  pure  and  single  source  whence 
flow  the  ideas  of  Truth,  Justice,  and  Love,  they 
only  being  capable  of  directing  humanity  towards 


INTRODUCTION.  7 

happiness,  and  if  the  spirit  of  good  in  the  world 
has  been  able  to  resist  the  incessant  attacks  of 
the  spirit  of  evil  (viz.  tyranny,  authority  in  all 
its  forms  of  faith,  custom,  education),  if,  in  a 
word,  human  nature  is  entitled  not  to  despair 
of  itself,  it  is  owing  to  the  poets  alone,  to  the 
true  teachers  who,  rising  above  their  age,  above 
the  ephemeral  institutions  of  religion  and  policy, 
have  from  time  to  time  led  humanity  back  to  the 
contemplation  of  the  natural,  indestructible,  and 
eternal  order  of  things,  in  which  are  contained 
the  only  laws  that  can  bring  forth  improvement 
and  happiness  to  mankind.  Such  have  been  the 
inventors  of  language,  of  music,  and  of  all  the  arts. 
Such  were  Job  and  the  Prophets,  Homer,  yEschylus 
and  Plato,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  and  Rousseau. 
"  Such  shall  I  be  if  I  am  a  poet,"  Shelley  said 
to  himself.  And  he  kept  his  word. 
/  His  poems  are  full  of  modern  revolutionary 
ideas,  but  still  more  full  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
ancients,  echoing,  as  it  were,  every  great  poet 
and  every  great  thinker  of  all  the  ages  ;  he  is 
their  brother  and  successor.  His  poetry,  accord- 
ing to  a  definition  of  Byron's  which  might  be 
Shelley's  own,  is,  in  truth,  "  the  consciousness 
of  a  past  and  future  world,''  that  "  before  and 
after"  which  he  has  sung. 

The  history  of  Shelley's  life  is  inseparable 
from  his  works,  which,  for  the  most  part,  are 
the  moral  autobiography  of  his  soul  ;  and  we 
have  sought  it  above  all  in  Shelley  himself,  in 
his  poems,  in  his  numerous  prose  writings  or 
fragments,*  and  especially  in  his  letters,  of  which 

*  H.  B.  Forman,  "The  Prose  Works  of  P.  Shelley,"  4  vols., 
1880.  Mr.  F'orman  has  also  edited  "The  Poetical  Works  of 
Shelley,"  4  vols.,  1882.  Besides  this  magnificent  edition, 
M.  Rossetti  has  edited  "Shelley's  Poetical  Works,"  3  vols., 
18S1,  with  the  latest  philological  criticisms  on  the  poet. 


s  SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

we  regret  we  can  only  offer  a  few  extracts  ; 
finally  in  the  recollections  and  memoirs  written 
by  his  wife  and  the  î&w  friends  who  knew  him 
intimately.  We  have  also  made  use  of  more 
recent  biographies,  especially  when,  as  is  the 
case  with  those  by  MacCarthy*  and  Rossetti.f 
the  most  scrupulous  historical  accuracy  is  com- 
bined with  reverence  for  their  subject  and  im- 
partial criticism. 

But  what  are  we  to  say  of  a  dull  and  spiteful 
composition  in  two  enormous  quarto  volumes  of 
nearly  a  thousand  pages,  in  which  Mr.  Jeaffreson 
has  chosen,  under  the  title  of  "The  Real  Shelley,"  J 
to  make  himself  the  mouthpiece  of  every  calumny, 
of  every  grudge,  of  every  enmity  harboured 
against  the  great  poet  by  Anglican  cant  .-*  Two 
volumes  as  thick  as  his  own  would  be  required 
for  his  refutation,  and  who  would  care  to  read 
them  ?  We  shall  content  ourselves  by  giving 
an  occasional  specimen  of  this  puerile  yet 
elephantine  criticism,  while  we  regret  that  real 
talent  should  have  been  wasted  on  such  an  un- 
grateful task.  Mr.  Jeaffreson's  big  book  proves 
but  one  thing  :  that  Shelley  struck  home  when 
he  attacked  the  intolerant  hypocrisy  of  Anglican 
fanaticism,  which  has  never  been  capable  either 
of  learning  or  forgetting. 

If  there  are  some  shadows  or  stains  on 
Shelley's  character  and  life,  they  fade  away  and 
disappear  in  the  resplendent  light  of  his  genius, 
and  we  may  give  him  the  benefit  of  his  own 
wise  reflections  on  the  great  poets  who  preceded 
him.     Mr.    Jeaffreson    would    have    done   well    to  * 

*  "  Shelley's  Early  Life,  from  Original  Sources,"  by  Denis 
Florence  MacCarthy,  1872. 

t  "  Memoir  of  Shelley,"  at  the  beginning  of  the  first  vol.  of 
his  edition  of  Shelley's  poems. 

Î"  The  Real  Shelley,"  by  J.  C.  Jeaffreson,  author  of 
"  The  Real  Lord  Byron,"  2  vols.,  1885. 


INTRODUCTION.  9 

meditate   on    these    words    before    taking    up    his 
pen  :   . 

Let  us  for  the  moment  stoop  to  the  arbitration  of  popular 
breath,  and  usurping  and  uniting  in  our  own  persons  the 
incompatible  characters  of  accuser,  witness,  judge,  and  exe- 
cutioner, let  us  decide  without  trial,  testimony,  or  form,  that 
certain  motives  of  those  who  are  "  there  sitting  where  we 
dare  not  soar''  are  reprehensible.  Let  us  assume  that 
Homer  was  a  drunkard,  that  Virgil  was  a  flatterer,  that 
Horace  was  a  coward,  that  Tasso  was  a  madman,  that  Lord 
Bacon  was  a  peculator,  that  Raphael  was  a  libertine,  that 
Spenser  was  a  poet  laureate.  It  is  inconsistent  with  this  divi- 
sion of  our  subject  to  cite  living  poets,  but  posterity  has  done 
ample  justice  to  the  great  names  now  referred  to.  Their 
errors  have  been  weighed  and  found  to  ha\e  been  dust 
in  the  balance  ;  if  their  sins  "  were  as  scarlet,  they  are  now 
white  as  snow  ;  "  they  have  been  washed  in  the  blood  of  the 
mediator  and  redeemer,  time.  .  .  "Judge  not,  lest  ye  be 
judged." 

To  Shelley  may  bs  applied,  more  fitly  than 
to  any  other,  the  noble  words  used  by  Berlioz 
regarding  himself: 

There  are  among  men  certain  beings  endowed  with  a 
peculiar  sensitiveness.  They  do  not  feel  either  in  the  same 
manner  or  the  same  degree  as  other  men,  and  in  their  regard 
the  exception  becomes  the  rule.  Their  peculiar  nature  gives 
the  key  to  their  extraordinary  life,  which  in  its  turn  affords  an 
explanation  of  their  fate.  Now  it  is  exceptional  natures  who 
lead  the  world  ;  and  it  is  well  that  it  should  be  so.  for  by 
their  struggles  and  their  pain  they  purchase  light  and 
movement  for  humanity. 

Mr.  Jeaffreson's  book  increased  our  eaget 
expectation  of  Mr.  Dowden's  "  Life  of  Shelley/' 
which  promised  to  contain  the  latest  historical 
criticism  of  the  poet.*  Nor  were  we  disappointed. 
Thanks  to  his  work,  we  have  been  able  to  fill 
up  more  than  one  gap  in  our  earlier  labours^  and 

*  "  The  Life  of  Percy  Rysshe  Shelley,"  by  Edward  Dowdcn, 
Professor  of  English  Literature  in  the  University  of  Dublin, 
in   2   vols.      London  :    Kegan   I'aul,  Trench,  &    Co.,    1886, 


lo    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

to  form  a  more  decided  opinion  on  certain  points 
in  the  poet's  life  that  were  open  to  doubt  and 
controversy.  The  numerous  and  important  origi- 
nal sources  whence  Mr.  Dowden  has  derived  new 
material  of  all  kinds  render  his  "  Life  of  Shelley  " 
a  crowning  work,  which  supplies  the  place  of  all 
others,  and  must  necessarily  be  consulted  by  any 
future  student  of  the  poet.  In  perusing  it,  we 
could  not  but  regret  that  we  might  not  substitute 
for  our  own  work  a  simple  translation  of  its 
admirable  pages.  But,  at  any  rate,  we  have  given 
in  substance  all  the  valuable  information  he  has 
added  to  the  story  of  Shelley  and  of  Shelley^s 
genius.  In  addition  to  the  above  sources,  so 
various  and  numerous  that  of  themselves  they 
supply  sufficient  matter  for  an  ample  biography, 
we  must  acknowledge  the  reception  of  documents 
of  all  kinds  from  the  zealous  and  enthusiastic 
Shelley  Society  in  London.  This  Society,  rank- 
ing worthily  with  those  devoted  to  Shakespeare 
and  Spenser,  omits  no  means  of  adding  daily 
some  fresh  revelation  to  the  poet's  history,  some 
new  ray  to  his  aureole. 

Shelley  believed  that  poets  could  only  be 
rendered  in  another  language  by  their  equals, 
and  in  the  same  rhythm  as  the  original  verse; 
and  following  these  rules,  he  has  himself  translated 
into  English  verse  favourite  passages  from  his 
great  models,  Homer,  Euripides,  Dante,  Caldcron, 
and  Goethe. 

Until  a  French  poet  worthy  of  Shelley  shall 
translate  his  poems  into  verse,  following  in  the 
track    of  some    few   shining   footsteps,*    we    have 

*  We  allude  to  some  excellent  renderings  of  detached 
poems  which  have  lately  been  published,  and  have  served 
us  as  models,  viz.,  "The  Cenci  "  and  "Hellas,"  translated 
by  Madame  Tola  Dorian  ;  ".\lastor,"  by  M.  Sarrazin  ;  part 
of  "  Queen  Mab,"  by  F.  V.  Hugo  ;  and  a  few  short  pieces  b> 
M.  Maurice  Bouchor, 


I  NT  ROD  UCTION.  1 1 

endeavoured  to  render  into  dull  and  ungrateful 
prose,  not  perhaps  the  untranslatable  music  and 
harmony,  but  at  least  the  movement,  the  warmth, 
the  delicacy  of  his  thought,  and  something  of 
the  brightness,  the  power,  the  strangeness,  and 
the  daring  originality  of  his  expression.  Shelley 
himself  would,  doubtless,  have  pardoned  us  for 
thus  destroying  his  divine  music,  for  the  reason 
that  by  means  of  our  translation  a  greater  number 
of  human  souls  would  share  in  the  treasures  of 
wisdom  and  tenderness  that  he  would  fain  have 
spread  before  the  whole  world. 

We  are  glad  to  express  our  gratitude  to  those 
who,  in  order  to  render  our  work  less  imperfect, 
have  lent  us,  with  a  zeal  beyond  all  praise,  the 
help  of  their  judgment  and  advice.  They  have 
kindly  consented  to  accept  the  dedication  of  some 
of  Shelley's  masterpieces  ;  but  we  are  conscious 
that  their  best  reward  will  be  the  knowledge 
that  they  have  helped  to  popularise  a  poet  who 
cannot  be  read  without  being  loved,  and  who 
cannot  be  loved  without  exciting  among  men  a 
longing  to  become  like  him,  to  be  better,  more 
generous,  and  more  human. 

F.  Rabbe. 


CHAPTER   I. 

EARLY    VKARS     OF     SHELLEY  —  FIELD     PLACE  — 
BRENTFORD — 1792-1805. 

On  August  4tb,  1792,  at  Field  Place,  near  the 
picturesque  little  town  of  Horsham,  in  Sussex 
— the  county  which  had  already  brought  forth 
Collins  and  Otway — a  child  was  born  who  was 
destined  to  become  indisputably  the  greatest 
English  poet  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  the 
little  chamber  in  which  he  first  saw  the  light 
the  following   inscription   may  now  be   read  * 

PERCY   BYSSHE    SHELLEY 

Was  born  in  this  room, 

August  4th,  1792. 

Shrine  of  the  dawning  speech  and  thought 

Of  Shelley  sacred  be, 
To  all  who  bow  where  Time  has  brought 

Gifts  to  Eternity.  ^ 

Two  spirits,  that  of  Plato  and  that  of  the 
French  Revolution,  met,  wondering  at  each  other, 
over  the  cradle  of  this  marvellous  child.  The 
Spirit  of  Revolution  had  found  her  Poet.  Through 
a  strange  combination  of  destiny,  she  marked  a  ' 
scion  of  England's  cold  and  selfish  aristocracy  on 
the  forehead  as  her  Pindar,  as  though  she  needed» 


EARLY   YEARS   OF  SHELLEY.  13 

while  standing''  ankle-deep  in  blood,  to  cool  her 
brow  in  the  mists  of  the  North,  and  to  take 
sanctuary  in  the  virginal  and  noble  soul,  where 
her  purest  and  sublimest  accents  should  reverberate 
for  ever. 

Without  retracing-,  with  certain  of  his  biogra- 
phers, the  poet's  ancestors  to  the  fabulous  Sir 
Guyon  de  Shelley,  the  contemporary  of  Roland 
and  Charlemagne,  we  can,  nevertheless,  thanks 
to  the  genealogical  tree  provided  by  Mr,  Forman, 
follow  the  direct  line  of  ascent  of  the  Shelleys 
of  Goring  Castle,  to  which  branch  Percy  Bysslie 
Shelley  belonged,  so  far  as  the  year  1623.  We 
will  not  delay  over  the  arguments  by  which 
Mr.  Jeaffreson  endeavours  in  a  long  chapter  of 
his  bulky  protest  to  prove  that  the  Castle  Goring 
branch  had  nothing  in  common  with  the  more 
aristocratic  branch  of  the  Michaelsgrove  Shelleys, 
that  it  owned  no  remarkable  name,  no  illustrious 
member,  and  that  the  poet's  family  has,  in  fact, 
no  right  to  be  called  patrician.  What  matters 
it  to  Shelley's  fame  that  the  nobility  of  his  family 
should  be  more  or  less  authenticated,  or  his  coat 
of  arms  more  or  less  ancient  ?  His  nobility 
consists  in  his  genius,  and,  as  he  himself  proudly 
foretold. 

What  have  we  done 

None  shall  dare  vouch,  though  it  be  truly  known  ; 

That  record  shall  remain,  when  they  must  pass 

Who  built  their  pride  on  its  oblivion  ; 
And  fame  in  human  hope  which  sculptured  was, 
Survive  the  perished  scrolls  of  unenduring  brass. 

If  there  was  in  Shelley  something  of  the  aristocrat, 
"the  quintessence  of  a  gentleman,'^  as  Hunt  says, 
it  was  the  product  of  an  exquisite  combination 
of  sentiment,  of  moral  grace,  and  of  habitual 
sympathy. 

The  first  baronetcy  in  the  family  of  the  Castle 
Goring  Shelleys  was  bestowed  on  Bysshe  Shelley, 


14     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

the  poet's  grandfather,  a  remarkable  character, 
with  strange  and  striking  traits  of  hkeness  to  his 
grandson,  and  yet  strongly  contrasting  with  him. 

Of  great  personal  beauty  and  charm  of  address, 
he  had  succeeded,  after  a  somewhat  obscurely 
passed  youth,  in  winning  successively  the  hands 
and  fortunes  of  two  heiresses,  whose  wealth  had 
principally  attracted  him.  The  first,  Mary 
Catherine  Mitchell,  the  only  daughter  of  the 
Rev.  Theobald  Mitchell,  of  Horsham,  ran  away 
with  him  from  her  father's  house  when  eighteen 
years  of  age.  They  were  married  in  London, 
whence  they  proceeded  to    Paris. 

This  episode  in  the  life  of  the  grandfather 
was  to  be  reproduced  in  that  of  the  grandson, 
but  with  an  essential  difference.  The  poet,  in 
carrying  off  his  successive  brides,  was  not  actuated 
by  cupidity,  but  by  love. 

Mary  Bysshe  Shelley  died  in  1760,  leaving 
three  children,  one  of  whom,  Timothy  Shelley, 
was  destined  to  be  the  father  of  the  poet.  Nine 
years  later,  Bysshe,  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight, 
again  eloped  with  an  heiress,  Miss  Elizabeth  Jane 
Sidney  Perry,  the  only  daughter  of  William  Perry, 
and  descending  in  a  direct  line  from  the  Sidneys, 
Earls  of  Leicester.  Her  fortune  was  one  of  the 
largest  in  Kent.  Five  sons  and  two  daughters 
were  the  issue  of  this  marriage. 

With  very  pardonable  weakness,  and  although 
not  one  drop  of  Sidney  blood  ran  in  his  veins, 
Shelley  liked  to  reckon  the  great  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  among  his  ancestors.  In  his '' Adonais'' 
he  calls  him  "A  spirit  without  spot.''  From  an 
intellectual  and  moral  point  of  view,  this  indeed 
is  his  true  descent  and  legitimate  aristocracy. 

After  the  death  of  his  elder  brother,  who  died 
childless  in  1790,  Bysshe  Shelley  devoted  himself 
to  the  embellishment  of  Field  Place,  of  which  he 
was    the    only   representative.      With   advancing 


EARLY   YEARS   OF  SHELLEY.  15 

years  he  had  become  more  and  more  eccentric. 
While  spending  eighty  thousand  pounds  in  building 
the  seat  of  the  new  baronets  of  Castle  Goring,  he 
spent  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life  poorly  enough 
in  a  little  cottage  on  the  Arun.  He  was  assiduous 
in  frequenting  the  Horsham  public-houses,  where 
he  laboured  inter  pocula  (without  drinking,  how- 
ever) for  the  electoral  successes  of  the  Whigs,  and 
thus  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  baronetcy  in  1806, 
through  his  patron,  the  Duke  of  Norfolk.  On 
his  death  .in  18 15,  he  left  a  large  fortune  of 
^300,000  in  the  funds,  and  ;^20,00O  a  year,  with- 
out counting  ^10,000  in  bank-notes  hidden  in  his 
sofa  cushions  or  between  the  pages  of  the  few 
books  that  he  possessed. 

With  all  these  eccentricities  of  a  gentleman  of 
the  olden  time,  Sir  Bysshe  displayed  a  great  in- 
dependence of  character.  He  was  profoundly 
sceptical  in  philosophy,  and  entirely  without 
speculative  opinions  of  his  own  ;  but  he  professed 
an  extreme  tolerance  for  the  opinions  of  others. 
Shelley  speaks  of  him  in  one  of  his  letters  as  an 
atheist,  who  looked  forward  to  annihilation  only 
at  the  close  of  life. 

Both  his  unbelief  and  his  tolerance  drew  him 
towards  his  grandson  in  the  same  measure  that 
they  estranged  him  from  his  own  son,  who  was 
far  from  sharing  those  sentiments. 

Shelley,  who  was  always  on  affable  and  cour- 
teous terms  with  his  grandfather,  although  there 
was  no  great  familiarity  between  them,  spoke  of 
him  without  either  affection  or  dislike  ;  but  he 
could  not  forgive  his  indifference  to  the  progress 
of  humanity,  his  want  of  generosity  and  heart, 
and,  more  than  all,  his  lust  for  gold,  that  "curse 
of  man,"  as  he  calls  it.  Some  traces  of  his  grand- 
father may  perhaps  be  recognised  in  one  of  the 
characters  in  "  Rosalind  and  Helen,''  who  dies 
*'pale  with  a  quenchless  thirst  of  gold." 


l6    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

The  poet's  father,  Timothy  Shelley,  had 
received  the  usual  education  of  a  gentleman  of 
the  period.  After  an  undistinguished  career  at 
Oxford,  he  had  made  the  customary  grand  tour 
of  Europe,  According  to  Medwin,  all  he  brought 
back  with  him  was  a  very  superficial  acquaintance 
with  France,  a  claim  to  knowledge  of  the  world, 
and  an  extremely  bad  painting  of  Vesuvius  in 
eruption.  He  was  a  thorough  English  gentle- 
man of  the  school  of  Chesterfield  ;  he  reduced 
politeness  to  outward  formalities,  and  morality 
to  expediency.  He  was  proud  of  his  name  and 
wealth,  and  was  ready  to  forgive  his  son  any 
and  everything  except  a  marriage  beneath  him. 
His  religious  opinions  were  extremely  broad, 
although  he  professed  to  accept  the  Thirty-Nine 
Articles  and  the  Established  form  of  worship  ; 
but  in  philosophy  he  held  with  noism,  to  use 
Shelley's  word.  His  moral  sense  was  some- 
what dull,  though  he  was  servile  in  his  con- 
formity to  rules  and  conventionalities,  in  a  word, 
to  cant,  that  social  hypocrisy  which  Byron  de- 
clares to  be  "  the  only  homage  paid  to  virtue 
in  England.'^  He  would  sacrifice  the  most  im- 
perious sentiments  of  nature  to  the  respect  due 
to  established  forms,  yet  he  understood  perfectly 
how  to  take  care  of  the  material  interests  and 
comforts  of  life.  A  brilliant  sportsman,  a  vain 
man,  although  without  any  kind  of  talent;  proud 
of  his  son's  genius,  provided  it  should  shed  some 
political  lustre  on  his  name  and  family  ;  play- 
ing rather  a  poor  part  in  politics,  merely  voting 
with  his  party  as  a  thorough-going  partisan  of  the 
Duke  of  Norfolk;  such  a  man,  wc  may  agree  with 
Mr.  Rossetti,  "was  ill-adapted  to  be  the  father  of 
so  divine  a  phenomenon  as  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley." 
In  1 79 1,  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  he  had 
married  a  young  lady  of  good  family  and  rare 
loveliness — Miss    Elizabeth    Pilfold,  the   daughter 


EARLY    YEARS  OF  SHELLEY.  17 

of  Charles  Pilfold,  Esq.,  of  Effingham,  Surrey. 
Of  her  the  poet  says,  "  She  was  gentle  and 
tolerant,  but  narrow-minded. ■"  She  was  in- 
telligent, a  good  letter-writer,  and  yet  with  very 
little  liking  for  literature,  especially  poetry.  Her 
yielding  disposition  caused  her  always  to  take 
the  side  of  paternal  authority  between  her  hus- 
band and  her  son,  while  her  orthodox  feelings 
were  readily  alarmed  at  the  influence  the  young 
free-thinker  might  exercise  over  his  sisters'  minds, 
to  the  prejudice  of  their  salvation. 

Two  sons  and  five  daughters,  all  of  rare  beauty, 
were  the  issue  of  this  marriage.  Percy  Bysshe 
Shelley  was  the  eldest. 

His  early  and  altogether  feminine  education 
among  his  young  sisters  at  Field  Place  left  an 
indelible  mark  on  his  mind.  His  childish  love 
for  his  sisters,  for  those  angelically  beautiful 
creatures  who  constituted  all  his  world,  became 
the  t3''pe  of  the  Platonic  love  he  laid  at  the  feet 
of  women,  when  they  seemed  to  him  to  realise 
in  part  the  pure  ideal  he  had  beheld  in  the 
unconscious  visions  of  his  childhood. 

All  his  life  he  recalled  with  delight  his 
awakening  as  a  child  to  the  joys  of  home,  to 
innocent  affection,  to  untroubled  and  passionless 
îove,  and  at  the  same  time  to  the  first  revela- 
tions of  Nature's  miagic.  He  has  described  these 
impressions  of  his  childhood,  these  primitive  ele- 
ments of  reflection  and  imagination,  in  the  second 
canto  of  "The  Revolt  of  Islam ^^: 

The  star-liglit  smile  of  children,  the  sweet  looks 
Of  women,  the  fair  breast  from  which  I  fed, 
The  murmur  of  the  unreposing  brooks, 
And  the  green  light  which,  shifting  overhead, 
Some  tangled  bower  of  vines  around  me  shed, 
The  shells  on  the  sea-sand,  and  the  wild  flowers, 
The  lamp-light  through  the  rafters  cheerly  spread, 
And  on  the  twining  flax — in  life's  young  hours 
These  sights  and  sounds  did  nurse  my  spirit's  folded  powers. 

C 


1 8  SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

That  delightful  life,  spent  in  the  companion- 
ship of  lovely,  refined,  and  pure  beings,  beneath 
the  tender  eyes  of  a  mother,  "that  innocent 
Paradise"  did  not  last  long  for  Shelley.  The 
sensitive  plant,  whom  the  first  contact  with  the 
rude  realities  of  the  world  vv^ould  wound  for 
ever,  was  soon  transplanted  from  the  maternal 
Eden  to  the  rough  fields  of  life  and  social  conflict. 
At  the  age  of  six  he  began  to  learn  the  rudi- 
ments of  Latin  from  the  Rev.  Mr.  Edwards,  the 
vicar  of  Warnham,  a  good  old  man  whom  he 
remembered  with  esteem.  No  doubt  the  regard 
and  esteem  felt  by  Shelley  for  country  clergy- 
men, whose  sublime  mission  of  sacrifice  and  self- 
devotion,  apart  from  all  religious  dogmatism,  he 
could  not  but  admire,  is  due  to  this  recollection. 
Is  it  paradoxical  to  say  that  there  was  the 
making  of  a  "  Vicaire  Savoyard  "  in  the  author 
of  "  Queen  Mab  "  .? 

At  one  moment  of  his  life  he  had  a  passing 
thought  of  entering  the   Church. 

The  following  narrative  shows  us  the  pro- 
foundly Christian  side  of  Shelley's  character 
whenever  he  came  in  contact  with  a  purely 
human  and  moral  Christianity  : 

"  We  were  walking  in  the  early  summer,"  relates  Peacock, 
"  through  a  village  where  there  was  a  good  vicarage  house 
with  a  nice  garden,  and  the  front  wall  of  the  vicarage  was 
covered  with  corchorus  in  full  flower.  He  stood  some  time 
admiring  the  vicarage  wall.  The  extreme  cjuietness  of  the 
scene,  the  pleasant  pathway  through  the  village  churcliyard, 
and  the  brightness  of  the  summer  morning,  apparently 
concurred  to  produce  the  impression  under  which  he  sud- 
denly said  to  me  :  '  I  feel  strongly  inclined  to  enter  the 
Church.  ...  Of  the  moral  doctrines  of  Christianity  I  am  a 
more  decided  disciple  than  many  of  its  more  ostentatious 
professors.  And  consider  for  a  moment  how  much  good 
a  good  clergyman  may  do.  ...  It  is  an  admirable  institution- 
that  admits  the  possibility  of  difiusing  such  men  over 
the  surface  of  the  land.'  1  replied  that  in  practice  he  would 
meet    with    too    many   obstacles   to   his   asjjirations.      We 


EARLY   YEARS   OF  SHELLEY.  19 

walked  on  in  thoughtful  silence  for  a  few  minutes,  and  then 
conversed  on  other  subjects." 

However  imperfect  may  have  been  the  early 
schooling  he  received  from  the  vicar  of  Warn- 
ham,  it  nevertheless  bore  precocious  fruit  in  the 
marvellous  boy,  whose  feats  of  memory  were 
prodigious.  _  His  sister  Helen  describes  the 
astonishment  with  which  the  elders  of  Field 
Place  would  listen  to  this  baby  of  six  or  seven 
repeating  Gray's  lines  on  "  The  Cat  and  the  Gold- 
fish," word  for  word,  without  missing  a  syllable, 
after  only  once  reading  the  verses. 

At  the  age  of  eight  he  began  to  emulate 
Gray,  and  to  try  his  strength  in  verse.  The 
earliest  English  verses  that  we  possess  by  him 
are  entitled  "  Lines  to  a  Cat,"  and  were  written, 
it  is   believed,  in   1800. 

At  ten  years  old  Shelley  left  the  parental 
roof  for  the  school  at  Sion  House,  Isleworth, 
near  Brentford.  His  cousin  Medwin  was  already 
there,  and  has  given  us  precious  recollections  of 
that  period  of  his  life  : 

This  school,  though  not  a  "  Dotheboys  Hall,"  was  con- 
ducted with  the  greatest  regard  for  economy.  A  slice  of 
bread,  with  an  "  idee  "  of  butter  smeared  on  the  surface  and 
"  thrice  skimmed  sky-blue,"  to  use  an  expression  of  Bloomfield 
the  poet,  was  miscalled  a  breakfast.  The  supper,  a  repetition 
of  the  same  frugal  repast  ;  and  the  dinner,  at  which  it  was 
never  allowed  to  send  up  the  plate  twice  without  its  eliciting 
an  observation  from  the  distributor  that  effectually  prevented 
a  repetition  of  the  offence,  was  made  up-  generally  of  in- 
gredients that  were  aitonymous.  The  Saturday's  meal,  a 
sort  of  pie,  a  collect  from  the  plates  during  the  week.  This 
fare,  to  a  boy  accustomed  to  the  delicacies  of  the  table,  was 
not  the  most  attractive.  .  .  . 

Exchanging  for  the  caresses  of  his  sisters,  an  association 
with  boys,  mostly  the  sons  of  London  shopkeepers,  of  rude 
habits  and  coarse  manners,  who  made  game  of  his  girlish- 
ness,  and  despised  him  because  he  was  not  "  one  of  them," 
nor  disposed  to  enter  into  their  sports,  to  wrangle,  or  fight  ; 
confined  between  four  stone  walls,  in  a  playground  of  very 

C   3 


20    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

limited  dimensions— a  few  hundred  yards — (with  a  sinj^le 
tree  in  it,  and  thai  the  Bell  tree,  so  called  from  its  having 
suspended  in  its  Dranches  the  odious  bell,  whose  din,  when  I 
think  of  it,  j-et  jars  in  my  ears),  instead  of  breathing  the  pure 
air  of  hie  native  fields,  and  rambling  about  the  plantations 
and  flower  gardens  of  his  fither's  country  seat —the  suffer- 
ings he  underwent  at  his  first  outset  in  this  little  world 
were  most  acute.  Sion  House  was  indeed  a  perfect  Hell 
to  him.  Fagging,  that  "  vestige  of  barbarous  times,"  reigned 
supreme.  Shelley  was  the  victim  and  the  scapegoat  of  these 
petty  despots,  who  used  to  vent  on  him  their  ill-humours 
in  harsh  words,  and  sometimes  even  in  blows.  Poor  Shelley  ! 
he  was  always  the  martyr,  and  it  was  under  the  smart  of  this 
oppression  that  he  wrote  : 

Afresh  May-dawn  it  was,. 
When  I  walked  forth  upon  the  glittering  grass, 
And  wept,  I  knew  not  why  ;  until  there  rose 

From  the  near  school-room  voices  that,  alas  ! 
Were  but  one  echo  from  a  world  of  woes — 
The  harsh  and  grating  strife  of  tyrants  and  of  foes. 

And  then  I  clasped  my  hands  and  looked  around  ; 

But  none  were  near  to  mock  my  streaming  eyes, 
Which  poured  their  warm  drops  on  the  sunny  ground, 

So  without  sham  I  spake  :  "  I  will  be  wise, 

And  just,  and  free,  and  mild,  if  in  me  lies 
Such  power  ;  for  I  grow  weary  to  behold 

The  selfish  and  the  strong  still  tyrannise 
Without  reproach  or  check."     I  then  controlled 
My  tears,  my  heart  grew  calm,  and  I  was  meek  and  bold. 

We  were  about  sixty  schoolfellows.  I  well  remember 
the  day  when  he  was  added  to  the  number.  A  new  arrival 
is  always  a  great  excitement  to  the  other  boys,  who  pounce 
upon  3.  fresh  man  with  the  boldness  of  birds  of  prey.  All 
tormented  him  with  questionings.  There  was  no  end  to 
their  mockery  when  they  found  that  he  was  ignorant  of  peg- 
top,  or  marbles,  or  leap-frog,  or  hop-scotch,  much  more 
of  fives  or  cricket.  One  wanted  him  to  spar,  another  to 
run  a  race  with  him.  He  was  a  iyxo  in  both  these 
accomplishments,  and  the  only  welcome  of  the  neophyte 
was  a  general  shout  of  derision.  To  all  iaese  impertinences 
he  made  no  reply,  but  with  a  look  of  disdain  written  in  his 
countenance,  turned  his  back  on  his  new  associates,  and 
when  he  was  alone    found  relief  in  tears. 


EARLY   YEARS   OF  SHELLEY.  21 

Shelley  was  at  this  time  tall  for  his  age,  slightly  and 
delicately  built,  and  rather  narrow-chested,  with  a  complexion 
fair  and  ruddy,  a  face  rather  long  than  oval.  His  features, 
not  regularly  handsome,  were  set  off  by  a  profusion  of  silky 
brown  hair,  that  curled  naturally.  The  expression  of  coun- 
tenance was  one  of  extreme  sweetness  and  innocence.  His 
blue  eyes  were  veiy  large  and  prominent,  considered  by 
phrenologists  to  indicate  a  great  aptitude  for  verbal  memory. 
They  v/ere  at  times,  when  he  was  abstracted  as  he  often 
was  in  contemplation,  dull,  and  as  it  were  insensible  to 
external  objects  ;  at  others  they  flashed  with  fire  and  in- 
telligence. His  voice  was  soft  and  low,  but  broken  in  its 
tones  —  when  anything  much  interested  him,  harsh  and 
unmodulated  ;  and  this  peculiarity  he  never  lost.  As  is 
recorded  of  Thomson,  he  was  naturally  calm,  but  when 
he  heard  of,  or  read  of  some  flagrant  act  of  injustice,  oppres- 
sion, or  cruelty,  then  indeed  the  sharpest  marks  of  horror 
and  indignation  were  visible  in  his  countenance. 

As  his  port  had  the  meekness  of  a  maiden,  the  heart  of 
a  young  virgin  who  had  never  crossed  her  father's  threshold 
to  encounter  the  rude  world  could  not  be  more  susceptible 
of  all  the  sweet  charities  than  his.  In  this  respect,  Shelley's 
disposition  would  happily  illustrate  the  innocence  and  vir- 
ginity of  the  Muses.  He  possessed  a  most  affectionate  regard 
for  his  relations,  particularly  for  the  females  of  his  family. 
It  was  not  without  manifest  joy  that  he  received  a  letter  from 
his  mother  and  sisters— for  the  two  eldest  he  had  a  spec^l 
fondness,  and  I  will  here  observe  that  one,  unhappily 
removed  from  the  world  before  her  time,  possessed  a  talent 
for  oil-painting  that  few  artists  have  acquired,  and  that  the 
other  bore  a  striking  resemblance  in  her  beauty  and  amia- 
bility to  his  cousin,  Harriet  Grove,  of  whom  I  shall  have  to 
speak.  .  .  .  The  dead  languages  were  to  him  as  bitter  a  pill 
as  they  had  been  to  Byron,  but  he  acquired  them,  as  it  were, 
intuitively,  and  seemingly  without  study,  for  during  school- 
hours  he  was  wont  to  gaze  at  the  passing  clouds— all  that 
could  be  seen  from  the  lofty  windows  which  his  desk  fronted 
—or  watch  the  swallows  as  they  flitted  past,  with  longing  for 
their  wings  ;  or  would  scrawl  in  his  school-books— a  habit 
he  always  continued— rude  drawings  of  pines  and  cedars, 
in  memory  of  those  on  the  lawn  of  his  native  home.  On 
these  occasions,  our  master  would  sometimes  peep  over  his 
shoulder,  and  greet  his  ears  with  no  pleasing  salutation. 

Our  pedagogue,  when  he  was  in  one  of  his  good  humours, 
dealt  also  in  what  he  called  faceliœ,  and  when  we  came 
to  the  imprisonment  of  the  winds  in  the  Cave  of  Eolus, 
as  described  in  the  "yEneid,"  used,  to  the  merriment  of  the 


22     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

school,  who  enjo)'ed  the  joke  much,  to  indulge  in  Cotton's  * 
parody  on  the  passage,  prefacing  it  with  an  observation  that 
his  father  never  forgave  him  for  the  Travestie.  .  .  .  Shelley 
afterwards  expressed  to  me  his  disgust  at  this  bad  taste,  for 
he  never  could  endure  obscenity  in  any  form. 

A  scene  that  to  poor  Shelley,  who,  instead  of  laughing, 
had  made  a  face  at  the  silly  attempt  at  wit,  and  which  his 
preceptor  had  probably  observed,  has  often  recurred  to  me. 
A  few  days  after  this,  he  had  a  theme  set  him  for  two  Latin 
lines  on  the  subject  of  Tempestas.  He  came  to  me  to 
assist  him  in  the  task.  Shelley,  acting  on  a  hint  from  me, 
made  use  of  the  following  distich  from  Ovid's  "Tristibus," 
(thedoctor  was  acquainted  only  with  the  "Aletamorphoses"): 

Me  miserum  !  quanti  montes  volvuntur  aquarum  ! 
Jam  jam  tacturos  sidera  celsa  pûtes. 

When  Shelley's  turn  came  to  carry  up  his  exercise,  my 
eyes  were  turned  on  the  Doininie.  There  was  a  peculiar 
expression  in  his  features,  which,  like  the  lightning  before 
the  storm,  portended  what  was  coming.  When  he  came 
to  the  lines,  he  read  them  with  a  loud  voice,  laying  a 
sarcastic  emphasis  on  every  word,  and  suiting  the  action 
to  the  word  by  boxes  on  each  side  of  Shelley's  ears. 
Then  came  the  comment  :  "Jam,  jam  !  Pooh,  pooh,  boy  ! 
raspberry  jam!  Do  you  think  you  are  at  your  mother's?" 
Hfere  a  burst  of  laughter  echoed  through  the  listening 
benches.  "  Don't  you  know  that  I  have  a  sovereign  objec- 
tion to  those  two  monosyllables  with  which  schoolboys 
cram  their  verses  .''  Haven't  I  told  you  so  a  hundred  times 
already  ?  Tacturos  .  .  .  sldcra  .  .  .  celsa  .  .  .  pules — what,  do 
the  waves  on  the  coast  of  Sussex  strike  the  stars,  eh  ? — celsa 
sidera— who  does  not  know  that  the  stars  are  high  ?  Where 
did  you  find  that  epithet.''  In  your  '  Gradus  ad  Parnassum,' 
I  suppose.  You  will  never  mount  so  high"  (another  box 
on  the  ears  which  nearly  felled  him  to  the  ground).  '''  Putesl 
you  may  think  this  very  fine,  but  to  me  it  is  all  balder- 
dash,  hyperbolical    stuff"   (another    cuff),   after    which   he 


"  Charles  Cotton  (i  630-1 687),  known  by  his  burlesque 
poems  and  translations.  He  brought  out  Scarron's  works  in 
English,  with  the  title  of  "  Scarronides;  or,  Virgil  Travestied," 
and  "  Lucian  Burlesqu'd  ;  or,  the  Scoffer  Scoff'd."  He  also 
trans'ated  Montaigne's  Essays,  1759,  3  vols. 

Cotton's  parodies  were  very  popular  in  England  ;  we 
have  a  copy  of  the  fifth  edition  of  his  Virgil  (1756}. 


*  EARLY  YEARS   OF  SHELLEY.  23 

tore  up  the  verses,  and  said  in  a  fury:  "There,  go  now, 
sir,  and  see  if  you  can't  write  something  better." 

Shelley  passed  among  his  schoolfellows  as  a  strange  and 
unsocial  being,  for  when  a  holiday  relieved  us  from  our 
tasks,  and  the  other  boys  were  engaged  in  such  sports  as 
the  narrow  limits  of  our  prison-court  allowed,  Shelley,  who 
entered  into  none  of  them,  would  pace  backwards  and  for- 
wards—  I  think  I  see  him  now — along  the  southern  wall, 
indulging  in  various  vague  and  undefined  ideas,  the  chaotic 
elements,  if  I  may  say  so,  of  what  afterwards  produced  so 
beautiful  a  world.  I  very  early  learned  to  penetrate  into  this 
soul  sublime — why  may  I  not  say  divine,  for  what  is  there 
that  comes  nearer  to  God  than  genius  in  the  heart  of  a 
child .''  I,  too,  was  the  only  one  at  the  school  with  whom  he 
could  communicate  his  sufferings  or  exchange  ideas.  I  was, 
indeed,  some  years  his  senior,  and  he  was  grateful  to  me  for 
so  often  singling  him  out  for  a  companion,  for  it  is  well 
known  that  it  is  considered  in  some  degree  a  condescension 
for  boys  to  make  intimates  of  those  in  a  lower  form  than 
themselves.  Then  we  used  to  walk  together  up  and  down 
his  favourite  spot,  and  there  he  would  outpour  his  sorrows 
to  me,  with  observations  far  beyond  his  years,  and  which, 
according  to  his  after  ideas,  seemed  to  have  sprung  from 
an  antenatal  life.  I  have  often  thought  that  he  had  these 
walks  of  ours  in  mind,  when  in  describing  an  antique 
group  he  says  :  "  Look,  the  figures  are  walking  with  a 
sauntering  and  idle  pace,  and  talking  to  each  other  as 
they  walk,  as  you  may  have  seen  an  elder  and  a  younger 
boy  at  school,  walking  in  some  grassy  spot  of  the  play- 
ground, with  that  tender  friendship  for  each  other  which 
the  age  inspires." 

If  Shelley  abominated  one  task  more  than  another  it 
was  a  dancing  lesson.  At  a  ball  at  Willis's  Rooms,  where, 
among  other  pupils  of  Sala,  I  made  one,  an  aunt  of  mine, 
to  whom  the  letter  No.  i  in  the  Appendix  was  addressed, 
asked  the  dancing  master  why  Bysshe  was  not  present, 
to  which  he  replied  in  his  broken  English  :  "  I\Ion  Dieu, 
madame,  what  should  he  do  here?  Master  Shelley  will 
not  learn  anyting  — he  is  so  gaucheP  In  f;ict,  he  contrived 
to  abscond  as  often  as  possible  from  the  dancing  lessons, 
and  when  forced  to  attend,  suffered  inexpressibly. 


Meanwhile,  careless  and  idle  as  he  appeared, 
Shelley  was  outstripping  all  his  schoolfellows. 
His  imagination  was  fed  on  wonderful  talcs  and 
■stories.     He  devoured  *every  book  that  came  in 


24    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET.^ 

his  way,  especially  the  little  sixpenny  volumes 
bound  in  blue  wrappers  telling  of  fairies,  giants, 
monsters,  bandits,  assassins,  and  magicians; 
amongst  others  was  the  story  of  "  Peter  Wilkins 
and  His  Flying  Wives,"  which  had  a  singular 
charm  for  him.  For  want  of  a  school  library 
the  boys  used  to  go  secretly  to  a  small  circulating 
library  at  Brentford,  and  there  lay  in  a  provision  of 
forbidden  goods,  including  the  works  of  Richardson, 
Fielding,  and  Smollett.  But  these  were  too  tame, 
too  sober,  too  realistic  for  the  soaring  imagination 
of  Shelley.  He  liked  tales  of  thrilling  adventure, 
of  heroic  and  superhuman  passion.  The  romances 
of  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  of  Rosa  Matilda  (Mrs.  Byrne) 
were  more  to  his  taste.  One  of  the  latter,  "  Zofloya, 
or  the  Moor,"*  influenced  him  much  as  Byron 
was  influenced  by  John  Moore's  "  Zeluco."  From 
'^Zeluco"  came  "Childe  Harold,"  and  "Zofloya'' 
inspired  the  romances  written  by  Shelley  in  his 
sixteenth  year. 

As  was  the  case  with  Milton,  Schiller,  and 
Goethe,  this  constant  dwelling  on  the  marvellous 
had  a  decisive  influence  in  directing  the  bent  of 
his  imagination.  The  harsh  realities  of  life  had 
already  driven  him  to  the  realms  of  fiction,  where 
he  found  the  realisation  of  his  youthful  ideals,  and 
we  must  not  be  surprised  if  at  that  period  he  had 
faith  in  prodigies,  in  apparitions,  in  the  evocation 
of  the  dead.  To  this,  indeed,  he  often  alludes  in 
his  later  works,  although  such  childish  superstitions 
had  then  lost  their  hold  on  him.  But  to  Shelley,, 
Poetry  always  remained  the  great  enchantress,  who 
by  a  touch  of  lier  wand  creates  another  earthy 
another  heaven,  and  other  men,  and  produces  at 
will  a  supernatural  spell  that  lifts  us  above  the 
dull  and  prosaic  realities  of  life. 

Such  a  state  of  poetical  excitement,  at  a  time 

.  *  Translated  into  French  by  Madame  de  Vitcrne,  4  vols.jr 
1812. 


EARLY   YEARS   OF  SHELLEY.  25 

when  his  constitution  was  still  unformed,  neces- 
sarily'affected  his  organisation  and  engendered,  as 
it  were,  a  second  intellectual  life,  resembling- 
hallucination  or  waking  dreams. 

"He  was  subject,"  says  Medwin,  '^to  strange 
and  sometimes  frightful  dreams,  and  was  haunted 
by  apparitions  that  bore  all  the  semblance  of 
reality.  .  .  .  He  was  given  to  waking  dreams,  a 
sort  of  lethargy  and  abstraction  that  became 
habitual  to  him,  and  after  the  fit  was  over,  his 
eyes  flashed,  his  h'ps  quivered,  his  voice  was 
tremulous  with  emotion,  a  sort  of  ecstasy  came 
over  him,  and  he  talked  more  like  a  spirit  or  an 
angel  than  a  human  being." 

During  Shelley's  second  or  third  year  at  Sion 
House,  Adam  Walker,  a  learned  astronomer,  de- 
livered some  lectures  and  exhibited  his  orrery  in 
the  large  hall  of  the  academy.  This  was  a  new 
revelation  to  Shelley  ;  he  was  startled  at  the 
calculations  of  astronomy,  and  delighted  with  the 
idea  of  the  plurality  of  Worlds. 

The  infinite  spaces  of  the  heavens  became  full 
of  new  meanings,  they  were  peopled  by  him  with 
wonderful  and  superhuman  beings  ;  and  his  imagi- 
nation began  to  build  up,  partly  on  scientific  bases 
and  partly  on  his  own  conceptions,  that  strange 
and  wonderful  cosmography  which  played  so 
important  a  part  in  the  greater  number  of  his 
poetical  creations.  '^  Saturn,"  says  Medwin, 
"which  was  then  visible,  and  which  we  after- 
wards looked  at  through  a  telescope,  particularly 
interested  him,  its  atmosphere  seeming  to  him  an 
irrefragable  proof  of  its  being  inhabited  like  our 
globe.  He  dilated  on  some  planets  being  more 
favoured  than  ourselves,  and  was  enchanted  with 
the  idea  that  we  should,  as  spirits,  make  the  grand 
tour  through  the  heavens.  .  .  .  He  was  equally 
charmed  with  chemical  experiments,  particularly 
with  the  fact  that  earth,  air,  and  water  are  not 


26    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE   POET. 

simple  elements.  This  course  of  lectures  ended 
with  the  solar  microscope,  which  ....  constituted 
to  most  of  us  ...  .  the  most  attractive  part  of 
the  exhibition  ....  and  afterwards  he  made  a 
solar  microscope  his  constant  companion.^'  The 
noblest  use  to  which  he  put  it  was,  doubtless, 
when  one  day  it  was  pawned  by  him  in  order 
to  pay  the  debts  of  some  poor  fellow.* 

Towards  the  end  of  his  Stay  at  Brentford 
(1805)  Shelley  met  with  one  of  those  exquisite 
natures  towards  which  he  was  attracted  by  his 
own  pure  and  affectionate  heart.  It  is  not  un- 
common— especially  in  England,  where,  owing 
to  the  system  of  education,  family  ties  are  easily 
broken,  or,  at  the  least,  but  little  fostered — for 
boys  to  seek  a  substitute  for  home  affections  in 
school  friendships,  which,  in  such  cases,  become 
fervent.  Byron,  too,  had  been  enthusiastic  in 
such  attachments.  In  one  of  his  note-books 
he  had  copied  the  following  sentence  from 
Marmontel  : 

"  Friendship  which  in  the  world  is  barely  a 
sentiment,  amounts  to  a  passion  in  the  cloister."  f 

Shelley  was  even  more  adapted  than  Byron 
to  taste  the  exquisite  happiness  of  impassioned 
friendship,  and  for  a  short  while  he  enjoyed 
that  happiness  at  Brentford.  An  affection  of 
this  ideal  nature  sprang  up  between  himself  and 
a  boy  of  the  same  age,  whose  name  we  do  not 
know. 

Shortly    before   his    death    he    put    in    writing 

*  An  ingenuous  and  touching  testimony  to  Shelley's 
generosity  and  tenderness  of  heart,  is  given  us  by  his  father's 
serving-man,  Lucas,  whose  duty  it  was  to  accompany  the 
boy  in  his  rides  about  Field  Place,  and  to  put  out  his  candle 
when  he  had  been  leading  in  bed.  "  He  was  so  generous, 
that  if  he  met  with  any  one  in  distress  he  would  give  lavishly, 
and  if  he  had  no  money  of  his  own,  he  used  to  borrow  of  me." 
Nor  did  this  kind-hearted  generosity  ever  diminish. 

+  Moore's  "  Memoirs  of  Lord  Byron,"  Vol.  L,  p.  76. 


EARLY   YEARS  OF  SHELLEY.  27 

a   recollection    of   this    romantic    episode    of    his 
school-days  at  Brentford  :  * 

The  nature  of  love  and  friendship  is  very  little  under- 
stood, and  the  distinctions  between  them  ill-estal^lished. 
This  latter  feeling — at  least  a  profound  and  sentimental 
attachment  to  one  of  the  same  sex— often  precedes  the 
former.  It  is  not  right  to  say,  merely,  that  friendship  is 
exempt  from  the  smallest  alloy  of  sensuality.  It  rejects 
with  disdain  all  thoughts  but  those  of  an  elevated  and 
imaginative  character.  I  remember  forming  an  attach- 
ment of  this  kind  at  school.  .  .  . 

The  object  of  these  sentiments  was  a  boy  about  my  own 
age,  of  a  character  eminently  generous,  brave,  and  gentle  ; 
and  the  elements  of  human  feeling  seemed  to  have  been,  from 
his  birth,  genially  compounded  within  him.  There  was  a  deli- 
cacy and  a  simplicity  in  his  manners  inexpressibly  attractive. 
It  has  never  been  my  fortune  to  meet  with  him  since 
my  schoolboy  days  ;  but,  either  I  confound  my  present 
recollections  with  the  delusions  of  past  feelings,  or  he  is 
now  a  source  of  honour  and  utility  to  every  one  around 
him.  The  tones  of  his  voice  were  so  soft  and  winning 
that  every  word  pierced  into  my  heart  ;  and  their  pathos 
was  so  deep,  that  in  listening  to  him  the  tears  have 
involuntarily  gushed  from  my  eyes.  Such  was  the  being 
for  whom  I  first  experienced  the  sacred  sentiments  of 
friendship.  I  remember  in  my  simplicity,  writing  to  my 
mother  a  long  account  of  his  admirable  c[ualities,  and  my 
own  devoted  attachment.  I  suppose  she  thought  me  out 
of  my  wits,  for  she  returned  no  answer  to  my  letter.  I 
remember  we  used  to  walk  the  whole  play-hours  up  and 
down  by  some  moss-covered  palings,  pouring  out  our 
hearts  in  youthful  talk.  We  used  to  speak  of  the  ladies 
with  whom  we  were  in  love,  and  I  remember  that  our 
usual  practice  was  to  confirm  each  other  in  the  everlasting 
fidelity  in  which  we  had  bound  ourselves  towards  them 
and  towards  each  other.  I  recollect  thinking  my  friend 
excjuisitely  beautiful.  Every  night  when  we  parted  to  go 
to  bed  we  kissed  each  other  like  children,  as  we  still  were. 


*  "  Fragment  of  an  Essay  on  Friendship."  Forman, 
Shelley's  Prose  Works.  II.,  p.  407.  Mr.  Dowdcn  names  as 
the  friend  to  whom  Shelley  possibly  alludes,  a  schoolfellow 
named  Tredcroft,  who,  like  Shelley,  was  thought  a  peculiar 
character,  was  possessed  of  considerable  poetical  talent,  and 
•died  young. 


28    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Up  to  this  period  in  his  life,  tenderness, 
delicacy,  especially  moral  delicacy,  predominated 
in  Shelley,  together  with  a  love  of  the  marvellous, 
a  tendency  to  reverie,  and  an  ecstatic  sense  of 
poetry.  But  he  was  far  from  being,  as  Mr. 
Jeaffreson  would  imply,  an  enervated,  doll-like 
creature,  regretting  his  mother's  apron-strings.* 
Endowed  v/ith  feminine  delicacy  and  sensibility, 
he  also  displayed,  from  earliest  childhood,  '  an 
unconquerable  will,  an  unusual  manliness  and 
strength  of  character,  and  he  showed  a  perfect 
consciousness  of  these  two  sides  of  his  nature 
when,  after  shedding  tears  at  the  sight  of  human 
misery,  he  predicted  of  himself:  "I  will  be  meek 
and  bold  !  "  It  is  just  because  those  two  minds, 
those  two  sides  of  human  nature,  were  united 
in  him  that  he  was  a  perfect  poet.  If,  on  the 
one  hand,  he  is  the  poet  of  woman  through  his 
charm,  his  sweetness,  and  his  morbidezza,  on  the 
other  he  is  still  more  the  poet  of  great  thoughts, 
of  strong  passions,  of  all  that  is  most  energetic 
and  masculine  in  man.  To  him  we  may  apply 
the  allegory  of  the  mysterious  Hermaphrodite, 
symbol  of  Art  and  Beauty  kneaded  and  shaped 
by  the  hands  of  his  Witch  of  Atlas,  this  Herma- 
phrodite being  none  other  than  himself  if 


Then  by  strange  art  she  kneaded  fire  and  snow 
Together,  tempering  the  repugnant  mass 

With  liquid  love — all  things  together  grow 
Through  which  the  harmony  of  love  can  pass 

And  a  fair  Shape  out  of  her  hands  did  flow, 

A  living  Image  which  did  far  surpass 
In  beauty  that  bright  shape  of  vital  stone 
Which  drew  the  heart  out  of  Pygmalion. 


*  "  He  was  a  gentle  English  girl  rather  than  a  gentle 
English  boy."— Vol.   I.,  p.  68. 

t  "  The  Witch  of  Atlas,"  xxxv. — xxxvii. 


EARLY   YEARS  OF  SHELLEY. 


29 


A  sexless  thing  it  was,  and  in  its  growth 
It  seemed  to  have  developed  no  defect 

Of  either  sex,  yet  all  the  grace  of  both, — 

In  gentleness  and  strength  its  limbs  were  decked  ; 

The  bosom  lightly  swelled  with  its  full  youth, 
The  countenance  was  such  as  might  select 

Some  artist  that  his  skill  should  never  die, 

Imaging  forth  such  perfect  purity. 

From  its  smooth  shoulders  hung  two  rapid  wings, 
Fit  to  have  borne  it  to  the  seventh  sphere, 

Tipt  with  the  speed  of  liquid  lightenings, 
Dyed  in  the  ardours  of  the  atmosphere. 


CHAPTER   IL 

SHELLEY   AT   ETON— 1804-1809. 

Shelley   entered   Eton    in   July,    1S04,    and   re- 
mained there  until  the  end  of  1809. 

There  was  then  at  Eton  a  man  whose  severity 
has  become  proverbial,  and  old  Keate's  time  is 
still  spoken  of  in  the  school.  Compared  with 
him,  Dr.  Greenlaw's  yoke  was  light.  The  boys, 
declared  that  his  name  was  derived  from  x«<»> 
I  shed  ;  ("rrj,  woe.  Hogg,  with  his  habitual 
humour,  has  sketched  for  us  the  portrait  of  this 
modern   Orbilius  : 


Dr.  Keate,  the  head  master  of  Eton  School,  was  a  short, 
short-necked,  short-legged  man  ;  thick-set,  powerful,  and 
very  active.  His  countenance  resembled  that  of  a  bull- 
dog ;  the  expression  was  not  less  sweet  and  bewitching  ; 
his  eyes,  his  nose,  and  especially  his  mouth,  were  exactly 
like  that  comely  and  engaging  animal,  and  so  were  his 
short,  crooked  legs.  It  was  said  in  the  school,  that  old 
Keate  could  pin  and  hold  a  bull  with  his  teeth.  His  iron 
sway  was  the  more  unpleasant  and  shocking,  after  the 
long,  mild,  Saturnian  reign  of  Dr.  Goodall,  whose  temper, 
character,  and  conduct  corresponded  precisely  with  his 
name,  and  under  whom  Keate  had  been  master  of  the 
lower  school.  Discipline,  wholesome  and  necessary  in 
moderation,  was  carried  by  him  to  an  excess  ;  it  is  re- 
ported, that  on  one  morning  he  flogged  eighty  boys.  Al- 
though he  was  rigid,  coarse,  and  despotical,  some  affirm 
that,  on  the  whole,  he  was  not  unjust,  nor  altogether  devoid 


SHELLEY  AT  ETON—\Zo\-\Zq^.  31 

of  kindness.  His  behaviour  was  accounted  vulgar  and  un- 
gentlemanlike,  and  therefore  he  was  peculiarly  odious  to 
the  gentlemen  of  the  school,  especially  to  the  refined  and 
aristocratical  Shelley. 

Yet,  notwithstanding  all  his  peculiarities,  Dr. 
Keate  was  an  excellent  teacher  and  an  upright 
man.  "  We  must  not  hold  lightly,"  writes  one 
of  his  pupils,  "  the  man  who  has  flogged  half 
the  ministers^,  secretaries,  bishops,  generals,  and 
dukes  of  the  present  century." 

The  scholars  were  worthy  of  the  master. 
Fagging  Avas  an  institution  at  Eton  as  well  as 
at  Sion  House.  Shelley,  not  satisfied  with  re- 
fusing to  obey  his  fag-master,  Matthews,*  declared 
war  on  the  system,  and  stood  apart  from  the 
whole  school,  for  by  declining  to  submit  to 
tyranny  from  one,  he  drew  on  himself  the  hatred 
and  vengeance  of  all  ;  and  the  boy-tyrants,  when 
their  dearest  prerogatives  were  assailed,  made  use 
of  the  same  arguments  against  the  rebel  as  did 
the  privileged  classes  at  a  later  date,  when 
Shelley  lifted  up  his  voice  against  their  hypocrisy 
and  prejudice,  and  endeavoured  to  combat  the 
social  fogging,  from  which  he  would  fain  have 
delivered  his  country  and  all  mankind,  by 
reason. 

At  Eton  his  schoolfellows  jeered  at  him,  hooted 
him,  pelted  him  with  mud  ;  afterwards  grown 
men  to  whom  he  spoke  of  liberty,  peace,  and  love, 
derided,  cursed,  and  banished  him. 

"  I  have  seen  him,"  wrote  an  eye-witness  of 
these  daily  scenes  of  cruelty,  "surrounded,  hooted, 
baited  like  a  maddened  bull,  and  at  this  distance 
of  time  (forty  years  after),  I  seem  to  hear  ringing 

*  Matthews  obtained  some  popularity  through  his  "Diaiy 
of  an  Invalid."  Among  his  older  schoolfellows  were  Milman, 
John  Coleridge,  Summer,  and  Nassau  Senior,  the  great 
interviewer  of  the  men  of  the  Second  Empire. 


32     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

in  my  ears  the  cry  which  Shelley  was  wont  to 
utter  in  his  paroxysm  of  revengeful  anger/' 

He  was  nicknamed  Mad  Shelley. 

But  his  courage  and  constancy  were  rewarded. 
His  tormentors  were  sooner  wearied  of  their  cruelty 
than  he  of  enduring  and  resisting  it.  The  Eton 
boys  recognised  at  last  the  strength  and  gentleness 
of  his  nature,  the  incontestable  supremacy  of  his 
character  and  talents.*  They  unanimously  be- 
stowed on  him  the  title  of  Lord  High  Atheist,  as 
signifying  he  was  the  chief  of  the  independents 
and  contemners  of  the  Eton  gods,  Dr.  Keate  and 
the  higher  powers  of  the  school.  This  title  made 
him  still  more  odious  to  the  authorities. 

Happily  at  Windsor  he  met  with  a  Mentor 
worthy  of  him,  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of 
Eton.  Dr.  James  Lind,  a  learned  physician  and 
chemist,  who  was  popularly  considered  a  kind  of 
conjuror,  became  his  protector,  guide,  and  friend. 
Ariel  had  found  his  Prospero,  and  Shelley  lavished 
on  the  good  old  man  all  the  tenderness  and 
affection  his  father  had  failed  to  win  from  him. 
He  writes  of  him  : 

This  man  is  exactly  what  nn  old  man  ought  to  be,  free, 
calm-spirited,  full  of  benevolence,  and  even  of  youthful 
ardour  ;  his  eye  seemed  to  burn  with  supernatural  spirit 
beneath  his  brow,  shaded  by  his  \enerable  white  locks  ;  he 
was  tall,  vigorous,  and  healthy  in  his  body;  tempered,  as  it 
had  ever  been,  by  his  amiable  mind.  I  owe  to  that  man  far, 
ah  !  far  more  than  I  owe  to  my  father  ;  he  loved  me,  and 
I  shall  never  forget  our  long  talks,  where  he  breathed  the 
spirit  of  the  kindest  tolerance  and  the  purest  wisdom. 

Far  from  forgetting  him,  as  Mr.  Jeaffreson 
hints,  Shelley  has  enshrined  Dr.  Lind  in  his 
verse,  and  has  depicted  him  as  that  type  of  old 
age  in  which    all    ancient  virtue    and    knowledge 

*  At  Oxford  Shelley  used  to  exhibit  with  pride  the  books 
his  schoolfellows  had  given  him  on  his  leaving  Eton.  Their 
names  were  duly  inscribed  therein. 


SHELLEY  AT  ETON—\Zo\-\Zo^.  iz 

are  incarnate,  as  well  as  every  lovable  quality 
which  formed  Shelley's  ideal  sage.  Zonaras^  in 
"  Prince  Athanase/^  and  the  aged  hermit  delivering 
Laon  from  prison,  are  but  more  or  less  idealised 
portraits  of  the  poet's  Eton  Mentor.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  this  gentle,  tolerant  old  man 
should  have  met  with  the  severe  censure  of 
Shelley's  enemies.  In  Zonaras,  Mr.  Jeaffreson 
sees  only  a  wicked  and  blaspheming  person, 
a  bitter  buffoon,  an  apothecary,  a  lost  soul.  It 
is  thus  that  our  French  Jeaffresons  have  treated 
our  great  Littré.  Dr.  Lind's  worst  crime  in  the 
eyes  of  this  critic  seems  to  be  that  he  did  not 
profess  so  much  esteem  and  affection  for  "poor  old 
George  III."  as  Mr.  Jeaffreson  considers  his  due  ! 

Dr.  Lind's  sharp  onslaughts  on  the  royal 
personages  of  the  time  found,  no  doubt,  a  ready 
echo  in  the  boyish,  generous  heart.  Through  a 
bitter  experience  of  life  Shelley's  innate  hatred 
of  tyranny  under  whatever  form  —  even  when 
assuming  the  venerable  name  of  father — had 
grown  and  strengthened./  That  this  hatred  may 
have  gone  so  far  as  to  "make  him  forget  the 
respect  due  to  Mr.  Timothy  Shelley,  and  to 
allow  his  name  to  become  the  laughing-stock 
of  his  schoolfellows^^  we  will  not  attempt  to 
deny  ;  but  we  may  be  allowed  to  offer  an  ex- 
planation of  so  singular  a  circumstance,  and  one 
which  seems  to  reflect  on  his  goodness  of  heart. 
One  of  the  most  characteristic  marks  of  Shelley 
is  the  logical  absolutism  of  his  moral  ideas.  The 
principles  of  philosophy,  and  still  more  the 
principles  of  morality,  ruled  his  mind  so  strongly, 
and  his  intellect  was  so  completely  swayed  by 
their  logical  consequences  and  deductions,  that 
he  was  incapacitated  from  taking  note  of  the 
finer  gradations  of  thought  or  sentiment  that 
would  have  modified  the  rigidity  and  diminished 
the  harshness   of  a   less    logical   mind.      Shelley 

D 


34    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

could  never  have  understood  Pascal's  aphorism  : 
"  The  heart  has  reasons  that  Reason  does  not 
acknowledge." 

But  Shelley's  grievances  were  not  merely 
philosophical  or  general.  If  we  may  believe 
him,rMr.  Timothy  Shelley  incurred  his  hatred  . 
by  endeavouring  to  place  him  in  a  madhous'ej 
Even  if  this  were  a  pure  hallucination,  as  some 
of  the  poet's  biographers  have  believed,  it  is 
certain  that  the  idea  produced  a  state  of  terror, 
and  that  it  was  one  of  the  motives  he  habitually 
alleged  to  his  friends  for  a  frequent  change  of 
residence. 

Hogg  gives   us    Shelley's  own  words   on   the 

subject  : 

Once,  when  I  was  very  ill  during  the  holidays,  as  I  was 
recovering  from  a  fever  which  had  attacked  my  brain,  a 
ser\'ant  overheard  my  father  consult  about  sending  me  to  a 
private  madhouse.  I  was  a  favourite  among  all  our  sentants, 
so  this  fellow  came  and  told  me  as  I  lay  sick  in  bed.  My 
horror  was  beyond  words,  and  I  might  soon  have  been  mad 
indeed,  if  they  had  proceeded  in  their  iniquitous  plan.  I 
had  one  hope.  I  was  master  of  three  pounds  in  mone}^,  and, 
with  the  servant's  help,  I  contrived  to  send  an  express  to 
Dr.  Lind.  He  came,  and  I  shall  never  forget  his  manner  on 
that  occasion.  His  profession  gave  him  authority  ;  his  love 
for  me  ardour.  He  dared  my  father  to  execute  his  purpose, 
and  his  menaces  had  the  desired  effect. 

The  most  important  result  of  Dr.  Lind's 
influence  over  Shelley  v/as  his  initiation  into  the 
love  of  scientific  research  and  the  true  appre- 
ciation of  the  fine  works  of  antiquity.  Under 
his  guidance  the  young  Etonian  read  "  The 
Banquet"  of  Plato,  whose  '^'' words  of  light"  he 
was  destined  to  translate  at  a  later  period,  and 
the  works  of  Pliny  the  Elder^  "  clear-sighted  and 
benevolent  Pliny,"  as  he  called  him.  The  chapter 
"  De  Deo  "  came  to  him  as  a  revelation,  and 
doubtless  sowed  in  his  intellect  the  first  germs 
of  atheism.     In   his  notes  on  "  Queen  ]\Iab  "  we 


-  SHELLEY  AT  £rC>iV— 1S04-1809.  35 

shall  find  it  cited  in  the  front  rank  of  the 
authorities  he  brings  forward.  He  also  trans- 
lated part  of  the  ''  Natural  History/'  but  was 
stopped  by  the  chapters  on  Astronomy. 

In  his  passionate  pursuit  of  science  Shelley 
did  not  confine  himself  to  reading.  His  thirst 
for  the  unknown  and  the  marvellous  led  him 
to  seek  by  practical  experiment  for  the  key  of 
the  mysteries  of  alchemy,  to  which  he  felt  strongly 
attracted.  Being  in  the  enjoyment  of  greater 
liberty  than  at  Brentford,  he  devoted  himself  to 
making  all  the  experiments  that  were  in  his 
power,  and  for  which  he  could  find  an  oppor- 
tunity. With  his  solar  microscope  he  set  fire  to 
a  train  of  gunpowder,  and  set  ablaze  an  old 
tree-stump;*  at  night  he  disturbed  the  whole 
house  by  upsetting  a  frying-pan  full  of  chemical 
explosives  into  his  fire  ;  or  he  might  be  found  in  a 
state  of  ecstasy  over  the  beautiful  coloured  flames 
of  which  chemistry  had  taught  him  the  secret. 

One  of  the  Eton  tutors,  Mr.  Bethell,  nick- 
named "  Botch  Bethell,"  in  whose  house  Shelley 
boarded — "  one  of  the  dullest  fellows  in  the  place," 
says  Packe — coming  one  day  to  Shelley's  room, 
found  him  entranced  before  the  exquisitely 
beautiful  blue  flames  in  which  he  delighted. 
Mr.  Bethell  inquired  what  he  was  about. 
Shelley  replied  he  was  raising  the  devil  !  The 
tutor  thereupon  seizing  hold  of  a  mysterious- 
looking  apparatus  on  the  table,  was  suddenly 
and  violently  thrown  back  against  the  wall.  He 
had  touched  the  handle  of  a  highly-charged 
electric  battery. 

Shelley  continued  his  various  experiments 
during  the  holidays  at  Field  Place,  to  the  wonder- 

*  Mr.  Jeaffreson  expends  many  pages  in  deploring  with 
much  pathos  the  fate  of  the  owner  of  the  old  stump,  the 
responsibility  incurred  by  Shelley's  masters,  and  the  risk  of 
fire  to  the  college  buildings.     Excellent  Mr.  Jeaffreson  ! 

D   2 


36    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

ing  terror  of  his   sisters.      Helen,  in   one  of  her 
letters,  gives  the  following  interesting  account  : 

I  confess  my  pleasure  was  entirely  negatived  by  terror. 
....  Whenever  he  came  to  me  with  his  piece  of  folded 
brown  packing-paper  under  his  arm,  and  a  bit  of  wire  and 
a  bottle  (if  I  remember  right),  my  heart  would  sink  with  fear 
at  his  approach  ;  but  shame  kept  me  silent,  and,  with  as 
many  others  as  he  could  collect,  we  were  placed  hand-in- 
hand  round  the  nursery  table  to  be  electrified  ;  but  when 
a  suggestion  was  made  that  chilblains  were  to  be  cured 
by  this  means,  my  terror  overwhelmed  all  other  feelings,  and 
the  expression  of  it  released  me  from  all  future  annoyance. 
...  His  hands  and  clothes  were  constantly  stained  and 
corroded  by  mineral  acids,  and  it  seemed  but  too  probable 
that  in  the  rash  ardour  of  experiment  he  would  set  the  house 
on  fire,  or  that  he  would  blind,  maim,  or  kill  himself  by  the 
explosion  of  combustibles.  He  himself  used  to  speak  with 
horror  of  the  consequences  of  having  inadvertently  swallowed 
through  accident  some  mineral  poison,  I  think  arsenic,  at 
Eton,  which  he  declared  had  not  only  seriously  injured  his 
health,  but  that  he  feared  he  should  never  entirely  recover 
the  shock  it  had  inflicted  on  his  constitution. 

The  marvellous  played  an  important  part  m 
the  games  invented  by  Shelley  for  the  amusement 
of  his  sisters.  He  used  to  dress  them  up  as 
angels,  or  fiends,  and  would  entertain  them  with 
tragical  and  fantastic  stories  about  the  "Greaîi 
Tortoise^'  that  had  lived  for  ages  in  Warnham 
Pond,  or  the  "  Old  Snake"  that  for  three  hundred 
years  had  inhabited  the  gardens  of  Field  Place. 
But  that  which  appealed  most  vividly  to  the 
imagination  of  the  little  girls,  was  the  story  of 
the  alchemist  Cornelius  Agrippa  himself.  Ac- 
cording to  Shelley,  this  old  magician  lived  in 
the  flesh  in  a  large  garret,  which  communi- 
cated with  the  playroom.  When  his  sisters' 
impatience  to  behold  this  mysterious  being  with 
the  long  beard  became  most  eager,  Shelley  would 
calm  them  by  promising  they  should  see  him  on  the 
day  when  he  left  the  garret  for  the  subterranean 
cavern  they  were  to  dig  for  him  in  the  orchard. 


SHELLEY  AT  ETON—\%o\-\Zo^.  37 

Shelley^s  experiments  ended  by  causing  such 
anxiety  to  the  Eton  authorities,  that  the  study  of 
chemistry  was  strictly  prohibited. 

There  is  Httle  doubt  that  our  poet's  ardour  for 
natural  and  chemical  science  was  but  a  superficial 
passion,  fed,  for  the  most  part,  by  his  love  of 
the  unknown  and  marvellous,  but  it  would  be 
unjust  to  attribute  it  with  Mr.  Jeaffreson  solely 
to  the  ''moral  perversity  ^^  that  attracted  him 
to  forbidden  fruit,  and  in  which  Shelley  himself 
seems  to  take  pride  when  he  says,  in  "  Laon  and 
Cythna'':* 

And  from  that  hour  did  I  with  earnest  thought 
Heap  knowledge  from  forbidden  mines  of  lore  ; 

Yet  nothing  that  my  tyrants  knew  or  taught, 
I  cared  to  learn.  .   .  . 

He  was  perfectly  aware  of  the  absence  of 
any  culture  of  science  in  the  classical  curricu- 
lum of  Oxford;  his  intuitive  and  perspicacious 
genius  perceived  the  immense  field  open  to 
students  of  positive  science,  that  '^  unjealous 
heiress^'  of  the  secrets  of  alchemy,  and  he 
was  especially  interested  in  the  benefits  that  it 
must  necessarily  procure  for  the  human  race.  We 
shall  find  him  afterwards  enthusiastic  in  the  pro- 
motion of  a  scheme  for  steamers,  and  he  would 
have  been  delighted  to  launch  the  first  of  these 
on  tlie  Mediterranean. 

I  If  Shelley  is  often  found  during  his  education 
m  opposition  to  the  teachings  or  the  spirit  of 
his  teachers,  the  reason  is  that  their  spirit  and 
those  teachings  appeared  to  him  narrow,  retro- 
gressive, and  inimical  to  all  real  progressTj  His 
only  error  was  to  have  set  up  too  high  and  too 
sublime  a  moral  standard,  and  to  have  insisted, 
in  spite  of  all  opposition,  on  conforming  his  life 
and  conduct  to  that  ideal.     In  so  far  he  was  like 

*  Dedication,  Stanza  v. 

447434 


38     SHELLEY— THE   MAN  AND    THE  POET 

Milton,  who  also  had  revolted  against  the  Cam- 
bridge rules,  and  had  refused  to  bear  a  yoke 
which  was  to  him  intolerable  : 

Nee  duri  libet  usque  minas  perferre  magistii, 
Cœteraque  ingenio  non  subeunda  meo. 

No  diatribe  of  Shelley's  enemies  will,  however? 
convince,  when  contrasted  with  the  formal  testi- 
mony in  his  favour  offered  by  many  of  his  school- 
fellows, and  in  particular  by  W.  G.  Halliday,  in 
the  following  letter,  which  we  quote  as  containing 
the  most  complete  portrait  of  the  Eton  boy  that 
has  come  to  us  :* 

My  dear  Madam, 

Your  letter  has  taken  me  back  to  the  sunny  time  of 
boyhood,  "when  thought  is  speech,  and  speech  is  truth;" 
when  I  was  the  friend  and  companion  of  Shelley  at  Eton. 
What  brought  us  together  in  that  smalj  world  was,  I 
suppose,  kindred  feelings  and  the  predominance  of  fancy 
and  imagination.  Many  a  lortg  and  happy  walk  have  I 
had  with  him  in  the  beautiful  neighbourhood  of  dear  old 
Eton.  We  used  to  wander  for  hours  about  Clewer,  Erog- 
more,  the  Park  at  Windsor,  the  Terrace  ;  and  I  was  a 
delighted  and  willing  listener  to  his  marvellous  stories  of 
fairyland,  and  apparitions,  and  spirits,  and  haunted  ground; 
and  his  speculations  were  then  (for  his  mind  was  far  more 
developed  than  mine)  of  the  world  beyond  the  grave. 
Another  of  his  favourite  rambles  was  Stoke  Park,  and  the 
picturesque  churchyard  where  Gray  is  said  to  have  written 
his  Elegy,  of  which  he  was  very  fond.  I  was  myself  far 
too  young  to  form  any  estimate  of  character,  but  J  loved 
Shelley  for  his  kindliness  and  afiectionate  ways  ;;he  was 
not  made  to  endure  the  rough  and  boisterous  pastime  at 
Eton,  and  his  shy  and  gentle  nature  was  glad  to  escape 
far  away  to  muse  over  strange  fancies,  for  his  mind  was 
reflective  and  teeming  with  deep  thought.  His  lessons 
were  child's  play  to  him,  and  his  power  of  Latin  versifica- 
tion marvellous.""^  I  think  I  remember  some  long  work  he 
had  even  then  commenced,  but  I  never  saw  it.  His  love 
of  nature  was  intense,  and  the  sparkling  poetry  of  his 
mind  shone  out  of  his  speaking  eye,  when  he  was  dwelling 

*  The  letter  is  dated  1857. 


SHELLEY  AT  ETON— iSo^-iSog.  39 

on  anything  good  or  great.  He  certainly  was  not  happy 
at  Eton,  for  his  was  a  disposition  that  needed  especial 
personal  superintendence,  to  watch,  and  cherish  and  direct 
all  his  noble  aspirations,  and  the  remarkable  tenderness 
of  his  heart.  ,  Jle  had  great  moral  courage,  and  feared 
nothing  but  wnat  was  base,  and  false,  and  lowri  He  never 
joined  in  the  usual  sports  of  the  boys,  and  what  is  remark- 
able, never  went  out  in  a  boat  on  the  river.  .  .  .  When 
leaving  Oxford  under  a  cloud,  he  said  to  me  :  "  Halliday, 
I  am  come  to  say  good-bye  to  you,  if  you  are  not  afraid 
to  be  seen  with  me  !  "  I  saw  him  once  again  in  the 
autumn  of  1814,  in  London,  when  he  was  glad  to  intro- 
duce me  to  his  wife. 

In  the  midst  of  his  philosophy  and  scientific 
pursuits,  the  young  Etonian  did  not  neglect 
literature,  and  he  manifested,  in  an  uncommon 
degree,  every  aptitude  for  becoming  an  eminent 
scholar.  At  fourteen  he  knew  Latin  sufficiently 
well  to  write  the  language  elegantly  in  prose  and 
verse  ;  in  fact,  in  Latin  verse  he  was  unrivalled. 
Medwin  has  preserved  for  us  some  specimens  of 
his  talent  in  this  line,  and  among  others  a  transla- 
tion of  the  epitaph  in  Gray's  well-known  "  Elegy 
written  in  a  Country  Churchyard."  Shelley  must 
have   written    these    verses   wit]i    delight.*      He 

*  Hie  sinu  fessum  caput  hospitali 
Cespitis  dormit  juvenis  ;  nee  illi 
Fata  ridebant,  popularis  ille 
Nescius  auras. 

Musa  non  vultu  genus  arrogant! 
Rusticâ  natum  grege  despicata  ; 
Et  suum  tristis  puerum  notavit 
Soilicitudo. 

Indoles  illi  bene  larga  ;  pectus 
Veritas  sedem  sibi  vindicavit  ; 
Et  pari  tantis  meritis  beavit 
Munere  ccelum. 

Omne  quod  mœstis  habuit  misero 
Corde  largivit,  lacrymam  ;  recepit 
Omne  quod  cœlo  voluit,  fidelis 
Pectus  amici. 


40    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

recognised  himself  in  more  than  one  line  of  that 
epitaph.  A  youth  on  whom  Fortune  would  not 
smile,  because  he  despised  popularity  ;  a  poet  led 
by  the  Muses  away  from  the  crowd,  and  marked 
by  Melancholy  from  childhood  ;  a  soul  the  abode 
of  Sincerity  ;  a  heart  whose  large  bounty  gave  to 
Misery  all  he  had — a  tear,  and  gained  from  heaven 
all  he  wished — a  friend  ;  this  description  fits 
Shelley  to  perfection,  and  as  he  penned  those 
lines,  the  Eton  boy  must  have  foreseen  a  similar 
epitaph  for  himself. 

To  the  study  of  the  dead  languages  Shelley 
added  that  of  his  own,  and  practised  himself  in 
the  composition  of  English  prose  and  verse.  He 
and  his  schoolfellow  Amos  wrote  some  little  plays 
together,  which  they  acted  before  another  boy 
of  the  same  age,  who  was  their  sole  audience  ;  and 
once  during  his  holidays  he  and  his  eldest  sister 
wrote  a  play  and  sent  it  to  Matthews  the  comedian, 
who  returned  the  manuscript  with  the  courteous 
reply  that  it  would  not  do  for  acting. 

It  might  not  have  been  easy  to  predicate  from 
these  childish  attempts  the  future  author  of  "The 
Cenci,"  but  it  is  certain  that  even  then  he  loved 
and  appreciated  the  "tender  wisdom"  of  one  whom 
he  looked  upon  as  without  a  rival,  and  set  above 
all  poets  of  all  time — the  author  of  King  Lear, 
"  the  most  perfect  specimen  of  dramatic  art  in  the 
world." 

His  mind  was  full  of  Shakespeare,  and  as  he 
lightly  ran  up  or  down  the  stairs  in  Mr.  Hexter's 

Longius  sed  tu  fuge  curiosiis 
Cscteras  laudes  fuge  suspicari  ; 
Cceteras  culpas  fuge  velle  tractas 
Sede  tremendâ. 

Spe  tremescentes  recubant  in  ilia 
Sede  virtutes  pariterque  culpje, 
In  sui  Patris  gremio,  tremendâ 
Sede  Deique. 


SHELLEY  AT  ETON—\Zo\-\Zo^.  41 

house,  he  would   be  gaily  singing  the    rhyme  of 
the  witches  in  MacbctJi: 

Double,  double,  toil  and  trouble, 
Fire  burn,  and  cauldron  bubble. 

Besides  verse-making  during  his  holidays  from 
Eton,  he  tried  to  initiate  his  sisters  into  the 
mysteries  of  poetry  and  versification.*  A  good 
many  specimens  of  his  verse  at  that  time  have 
come  down  to  us.  We  shall  find  them  hereafter 
in  one  of  his  romances. 

These  romances  were  Shelley's  most  important 
work  while  at  Eton.  His  biographers  and  critics 
have,  to  our  mind,  passed  over  too  lightly  these 
imaginative  and  romantic  effusions  of  the  youthful 
Shelle)^  They  cannot  be  ignored  without  leaving 
a  blank  in  the  history  of  his  mental  development. 

The  Eton  romance-writer  is  an  explanation  of 
the  Oxford  atheist  and  the  poet  of  "  Queen  Mab  ;  " 
and  the  germ  of  Shelley  as  poet,  philosopher,  and 
moralist,  is  contained  in  novels  written  by  him  in 
his  sixteenth  year. 

Some  years  ago  a  subscription  was  begun  by 
Mr.  Oscar  Browning,  then  a  master  at  Eton, 
to  set  up  a  bust  of  Shelley  among  the  Eton 
celebrities.  The  Provost  of  Eton  forbade  it,  and 
the  subscription  list,  which  had  already  reached  a 
considerable  sum,  was  suspended.  The  name  of 
that  Provost  of  Eton  deserves  to  be  recorded.  It 
was  Dr.  Goodford. 

*  "  His  first  lesson  to  me,"  writes  his  sister  Helen,  "I 
perfectly  remember.  There  were  several  short  poems,  I 
tlimk',  of  which  he  gave  me  the  subject,  and  one  line  about 
*  an  old  woman  in  lier  bonny  gown  '  (even  the  rhyme  to  which 
\  forget)  elicited  the  praise  for  which  I  wrote.  Subsequently 
he  h  id  them  printed,  and  the  mistake  I  made  about  sending 
one  of  my  heroes  or  heroines  out  by  night  and  day  in  the 
same  stanza  he  would  not  alter,  but  excused  it  by  quoting 
something  from  Shakespeare." 


CHAPTER   in. 

SHELLEY      AS     A     WRITER      OF      ROMANCE — 
"  ZASTROZZI  " — "  ST.    IRVYNE  " — 1 809- 1 8 1 0. 

With  Shelley  to  conceive  was  to  execute,  whether 
in  literature  and  poetry  or  in  life.  He^  felt  an 
imperious  need  of  communicating  his,  ideal  6T 
beauty  and  goodness  to  his  fellow-men  ;  in  what 
form  mattered  not  so  long  as  it  conveyed  his 
impressions  faithfully.  Hence  his  thirst  for 
publication  during  the  years  at  Eton,  hence  his 
longing  that  no  spark  of  beauty  or  of  love  should 
be  lost  to  the  world;  and  endowed  as  he  was 
with  the  faculty  of  appropriating  everything  in 
harmony  with  his  own  attraction  towards  the 
marvellous,  the  gigantic,  and  the  supernatural, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  he  chose  his  models  among 
the  authors  of  the  sublime  horrors,  the  extravagant 
tales,  the  romantic  and  sentimental  ballads  that 
were  just  then  produced  in  profusion  in  England. 
He  had  shuddered  and  grown  pale  in  reading 
them,  and  while  still  full  of  his  conceptions  and 
still  palpitating  with  divine  emotion,  he  attempted 
to  make  others  shudder  and  grow  pale  in  their 
turn. 

In  April,  1810,  Messrs.  Wilkie  &  Robinson 
brought  out  a  novel  entitled  "  Zastrozzi/'  *  by 
P.  B.  S. 

*  "Zastrozzi"  was  unfavourably  reviewed  in  the  Critical 
Revicuj  for  November,  18 10.     The   only  interesting   point 


SHELLEY  AS  A    WRLTER   OF  ROMANCE.     43 

Mr.  Rossetti  wonders  how  any  real  live 
publisher  was  found  to  give  forty  pounds  for 
the  privilege  of  publishing  such  a  rliapsody^  or 
reviewers  to  criticise  and  expose  its  alleged  im- 
morality. It  is,  no  doubt,  far  from  being  a 
masterpiece  ;  it  is  in  the  blood-and-thunder  style 
of  Mrs,  Radclifife  and  of  Lewis,  and  while 
exaggerating  the  defects  of  their  style,  it  betrays 
in  every  line  the  most  ingenuous  inexperience  of 
literary  composition,  without  sequence,  or  variety, 
or  probability.  But  in  judging  it  we  must  not  forget 
that  the  author,  when  he  wrote  it,*  was  a  youth 
of  seventeen  or  eighteen,  and  on  a  near  inspection, 
it  is  possible  to  discern  in  many  passages  germs 
of  the  brilliant  qualities  as  well  as  of  the  defects 
that  mark  his  early  poetical  works.  The  characters 
sketched  out  in  the  novel  reappear  in  after  years 
transfigured  by  the  magic  pen  of  the  poet;  the 
hero  of  "  Zastrozzi  "  becomes  the  hero  of  "  Laon 
and  Cythna,"  and  more  than  one  episode  of  the 
novel  is  repeated   in   the   poem. 

After  all,  one  feels  a  human  heart  beating 
through  it,  one  hears  the  voice  of  true,  strong 
passion,  something  of  the  stirring  and  tragic 
eloquence  that  bursts  forth  in  "  The  Cenci." 

"  Though  quite  uncharacteristic  of  me  as  I 
now  am,"  wrote  Shelley  three  )'ears  after  the 
appearance  of  "  Zastrozzi,"  "  nevertheless  these 
romances  serve  to  mark  the  state  of  my  mind 
at  the  period  of  their  composition.^^  t 

in  the  article  is  that  Shelley  is  even  then  denounced  as 
the  monster  of  perversity  who  subsequently  was  so  bitterly 
attacked  by  the  Qitaricrly  Rcvieiv  and  the  Literary  Gazette. 
"  The  narrative  itself,  as  well  as  the  style  in  which  it  is 
written,  is  so  contemptible  that  we  should  have  passed  it 
over  in  silence,  only  for  the  indignation  excited  by  its 
gross  and  barefaced  immorality.  .  .  .  We  cannot  too  strongly 
reprobate  the  author.  His  absurd  and  stupid  jargon  can- 
not redfeem  him  from  infamy,  or  his  book  from  the  flames." 

*  "Zastrozzi"  was  written  in  1808  and  1809. 

t  Letter  to  Godwin,  181 2.  He  thus  describes  his  mental 
state  :  "  It  is  to  you  and  to  your  works  that  I  owe  my  restora- 


44  SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

We  may  describe  this  state  of  mind  from  a 
moral  and  philosophic  point  of  view  by  noting 
that  just  then  Shelley  was,  as  it  were,  divided 
between  a  certain  admiration  for  the  fatalism  of 
the  great  passions,  and  the  worship  of  lieroism, 
or  of  the  human  will  made  subservient  to  that 
fatality.  The  sovereign  principle  of  the  moral 
life,  self-control,  he  has  made  incarnate  in 
his  hero  Zastrozzi, 

Pietro  Zastrozzi  is  the  son  of  a  certain  Verezzi, 
an  Italian  count,  and  of  Olivia  Zastrozzi,  who 
at  fifteen  has  been  seduced  by  him,  and  is  after- 
wards cruelly  deserted.  Olivia  on  her  death-bed 
exacts  an  oath  of  vengeance  from  her  son.  Not 
satisfied  with  driving  a  poniard  into  his  father's 
heart,  Zastrozzi  vindictively  pursues  the  young 
Count  Verezzi,  heir  to  that  detested  name,  and 
in  order  to  enjoy  all  the  delights  of  revenge  at 
his  leisure,  he  employs  every  refinement  of  moral 
torture  suggested  by  the  most  infernal  ingenuity 
for  inflicting  suffering  on  his  victim  without 
depriving  him  of  life.  The  same  situation  occurs 
in  Godwin's  celebrated  novel,  "Caleb  Williams," 
in  which  the  hero  is  persecuted  after  a  similar 
fashion  by  Mr.  Falkland. 

Zastrozzi  seeks  above  all  to  strike  Verezzi 
through  his  love.  Two  women  are  in  love  with 
him  :  one  is  Julia,  Marchesa  di  Strobazzo,  to 
whom  Verezzi  has  devoted  his  heart  and  life  ; 
the  other  is  Matilda,  Contessa  di  Laurentini,  an 
enchanHng  and  hateful  siren.  Both  are  beautiful 
and  wealthy,  and  burn  with  the  same  jealous 
and  irresistible  passion. 

The  romance  opens  with  Verezzi  on  his  jour- 
ney to    Naples,  where  Julia    awaits  him.     He  is 

tion  from  the  state  of  intellectual  lethargy  in  which  I  was 
plunged  two  years  ago.  'St.  Irvyne'and  '  Zastrozzi  '  repre- 
sented my  boyish  visions,  which  were  wild  without  being 
original." 


SHELLEY  AS  A    WRITER   OF  ROMANCE.     43 

at  an  inn  at  Munich,  where  Zastrozzi  gives  him 
a  drink  by  which  he  is  thrown  into  a  heavy 
sleep.  Two  sbirri,  named  Ugo  and  Bernardo, 
creatures  of  Zastrozzi,  carry  the  sleeping  man  to 
a  carriage,  and  deposit  him  in  a  cavern,  in  a 
dense  forest  in  the  depths  of  a  gloomy  valley. 
So  also,  in  "  Laon  and  Cythna,"  Laon,  separated 
from  Cythna,  as  Verezzi  from  Julia,  is  borne 
swooning  to  the  mysterious  cavern  surmounted  by 
a  pillar,  where  he  suffers  unimaginable  tortures.* 

Verezzi  awakes  from  his  stupor  face  to  face 
with  his  foe,  who  orders  him  to  follow  him. 
They  come  to  the  iron  gate  of  a  dungeon  in 
the  rock,  where  the  unhappy  Verezzi  is  bound 
to  the  wall,  as  Laon  is  to  the  pillar.  "  With  chains 
which  eat  into  the  flesh,  alas  !  with  brazen  links 
my  naked  limbs  they  bound."     Laon  says  : 

I  gjnawed  my  brazen  chain,  and  sought  to  sever 
Its  adamantine  links  that  I  might  die  t 

Verezzi  has  no  support  but  his  own  reflections, 
which  are  his  greatest  torment,  and  he  implores 
death  from  his  tormentors.  Silence  is  the  only 
answer.  "Days  and  nights  seemingly  countless" 
are  passed  "  in  the  same  monotonous  uniformity 
of  horror  and  despair.  He  scarcely  now  shuddered 
when  the  slimy  lizard  crossed  his  naked  and 
motionless  limbs.  The  large  earth-worms,  which 
twined  themselves  in  his  long  and  matted  hair, 
almost  ceased  to  excite  sensations  of  horror. 
Days  and  nights  were  undistinguishable  from 
each  other,  and  ....  were  lengthened  by  his 
perturbed  imagination  into   so   many  years.'' 

Prometheus,  too,  bound  to  the  rock  by  iron 
chains,  counts  the  moments,  "  divided  by  keen 
pangs,  till  they  seemed  years." 

*  "Laon  and  Cythna,"  Canto  III.,  Stanza  11,  et  seq. 
t  "  Laon  and  Cythna,"  Stanzas  14  and  19. 


46    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Verezzi  succeeds,  however,  in  eluding  the 
watchfulness  of  his  keepers,  and  flies  by  moon- 
light across  the  heath,  pursued  by  Zastrozzi. 
He  is  miraculously  saved  by  a  gigantic  pine- 
tree,  that  shelters  him.  while  sleeping,  and  at  last 
reaches  Passau,  where  he  falls  asleep  on  some 
stone  steps  in  the  deserted  streets.  He  is  awoke 
by  an  old  woman  carrying  a  basket  of  flowers 
to  sell  in  the  market.*  Claudine  (for  that  is 
her  name),  having  just  lost  her  son,  takes  pity 
on  the  unfortunate  youth,  and  leads  him  home 
to  her  humble  cottage,  "a  pleasant  and  culti- 
vated spot,  on  a  little  hill  overlooking  the  majestic 
Danube.'' 

"What  induced  you,"  said  he  to  Claudine,  as  in  the 
evening  they  sat  before  the  cottage  door,  "what  induced 
you  to  make  that  offer  this  morning  to  me  ?" 

"  Ah  !  "  said  the  old  woman,  "  it  was  but  last  week  that 
I  lost  my  dear  son,  who  was  everything  to  me  ;  he  died 
by  a  fever  which  he  caught  by  his  too  great  exertions 
in  obtaining  a  livelihood  for  me  ;  and  I  came  to  the 
market  yesterday,  for  the  first  time  since  my  son's  death, 
hoping  to  find  some  peasant  who  would  fill  his  place, 
when  chance  threw  you  in  my  way.  I  had  hoped  that  he 
would  have  outlived  me,  as  I  am  quickly  hastening  to  the 
grave,  to  which  I  look  forward  as  to  the  coming  of  a  friend, 
who  would  relieve  me  from  those  cares  which,  alas  !  but 
increase  wilh  my  years." 

Verezzi  compassionately  assures  her  that  he 
will  not  forsake  her,  and  that  it  shall  not  be 
his  fault  if  she  remains   in   poverty. 

The  first  part  of  Shelley's  narrative  shows  us 
one  of  his  favourite  devices  in  composition  :  a 
contrast  between  the  darkest  and  most  terrible 
imaginings  of  a  mind  almost  in  a  state  of  delirium, 
and  the  sweet  and  tender  conceits  of  a  childlike 
and  ingenuous  nature.  The  use  of  such  contrasts, 
sometimes  strained  but  always  effective,  is  one  of 
the  most  striking  features  of  his  genius. 

*  This  episode  is  borrowed  f  cm  "  Zofloya." 


SHELLEY  AS  A    WRITER   OF  ROMANCE.    47 

Moreover,  a  careful  attention  to  the  scene  of 
the  action  is  already  apparent  ;  a  description  of 
nature  is  mingled  with  the  narrative  ;  the  young 
writer  knows  when  to  deduce  a  moral,  evincing 
a  depth  of  thought  very  uncommon  at  his  age. 
After  describing  the  anger  of  Zastrozzi  on  learning 
that  his  victim  has  escaped,  and  his  mad  pursuit 
of  the  fugitive,  he  brings  him  before  us  worn  out 
with  hunger,  thirst,  and  fatigue,  but  thirsting  yet 
more  for  vengeance,  and  describes  a  great  forest 
whose  gigantic  tree-tops  intercept  the  burning 
rays  of  tlie  sun,  while  the  moss-grown  slopes 
beneath  invite  to  repose. 

"  The  sun  began  to  decline  ;  at  last  it  sank  beneath  the 
western  mountain,  and  the  forest  tops  were  tinged  by  its 
departing  ray.     The  shades  of  night  rapidly  thickened. 

Zastrozzi  sat  awhile  upon  the  decayed  trunk  of  a  scathed 
oak. 

The  sky  was  serene,  the  blue  ether  was  spangled  with 
countless  myriads  of  stars  ;  the  tops  of  the  lofty  forest  trees 
waved  mournfully  in  the  evening  wind  ;  and  the  moonbeams 
penetrating  at  intervals,  as  they  moved,  through  the  matted 
branches,  threw  dubious  shades  upon  the  dark  underwood 
beneath. 

Ugo  and  Bernardo,  conquered  by  irresistible  torpor,  sank 
to  rest  upon  the  dewy  turf. 

A  scene  so  fair,  a  scene  so  congenial  to  those  who  can 
reflect  upon  their  past  lives  with  pleasure,  and  anticipate 
the  future  with  the  enthusiasm  of  innocence,  ill  accorded 
with  the  ferocious  soul  of  Zastrozzi,  which,  at  one  time 
agitated  by  revenge,  at  another  by  agonising  remorse  or 
contending  passions,  could  derive  no  pleasure  from  the 
past — anticipate  no  happiness  in  futurity." 

Still  pursuing  Verezzi,  Zastrozzi  finds  himself 
on  a  sudden,  and  as  if  by  enchantment,  in  front 
of  a  fantastic  Gothic  palace,  which  seems  to  be 
deserted.  He  enters  with  his  followers,  climbs  a 
wide  staircase,  and  reaches  a  long  corridor,  at 
the  end  of  which  is  a  woman  in  white  draperies 
who  leans  on  a  lamp-lighted  balustrade.  He 
recognises  Matilda,  Contessa  di  Laurentini. 


48    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Just  as  Zastrozzi  is  the  incarnate  fiend  of 
revenge,  so  is  Matilda  that  of  wild  and  relentless 
passion.  She  reveals  herself  at  once,  and  entreats 
Zastrozzi  to  rid  her  of  her  hateful  rival. 

"I  almost  shudder,"  exclaimed  Matilda,  "at  the  sea 
of  wickedness  on  which  I  am  about  to  embark  !  But 
still,  Verezzi — ah!  for  him  would  I  even  lose  my  hopes 
of  eternal  happiness.  In  the  sweet  idea  of  calling  him 
mine,  no  scrupulous  delicacy,  no  mistaken  superstitious 
fear,  shall  prevent  me  from  deserving  him  by  daring  acts. 
— No  !  I  am  resolved,"  continued  Matilda,  as  recollecting 
his  graceful  form,  her  soul  was  assailed  by  tenfold  love ." 

Zastrozzi  desires  nothing  better  ;  the  infernal 
passion  of  the  furious  woman  will  accomplish  his 
vengeance;  he  departs  from  Italy  while  Matilda 
flies  in  pursuit  of  Verezzi. 

Careless  of  modesty  and  decorum,  she  wanders 
solitary  at  night  through  the  streets  of  Passau 
seeking  for  her  beloved. 

"  A  gloomy  silence  reigned  through  the  streets  of  the  city  ; 
it  was  past  midnight,  and  every  inhabitant  seemed  to  be  sunk 
in  sleep — sleep  which  Matilda  was  almost  a  stranger  to. 
Her  white  robes  floated  on  the  night  air — her  shadowy 
and  dishevelled  hair  flew  over  her  form,  which,  as  she 
passed  the  bridge,  seemed  to  strike  the  boatmen  below 
with  the  idea  of  some  supernatural  and  ethereal  form." 

Attracted  by  the  waters  of  the  Danube,  which 
"  reflect  her  symmetrical  form,^^  she  is  about  to 
drown  herself,  when  the  arms  of  a  stranger  hold 
her  back.  It  is  Verezzi  !  Verezzi,  whom  she  recog- 
nises after  a  brief  swoon,  "  bending  in  anxious 
solicitude  over  her  elegantly  proportioned  form." 

Verezzi  follows  Matilda  into  the  mysterious 
Gothic  palace.  The  coldness  and  indifference  with 
which  he  at  first  hstens  to  her  protestations  of  love, 
and  his  unchanging  fidelity  to  Julia,  only  intensify 
the   Countess's  passion.     Zastrozzi  brings  a  false 


SHELLEY  AS  A   WRITER  OF  ROMANCE.    49 

report  of  Julia's  death,  and  Verezzi  falls  a  prey- 
to  fever  and  delirium,  which  endanger  his  life. 
Meanwhile  Zastrozzi  and  Matilda  have  frequent 
interviews,  in  which  Zastrozzi  endeavours  to  up- 
root every  moral  and  religious  feeling  from  her 
mind.  He  puts  before  her  in  the  crudest  terms 
a  system  of  complete  Epicureanism.  Matilda 
readily  accepts  his  theories.  "Thy  words,"  she 
says,  "  are  a  balm  to  my  soul."  She  has  but  one 
remaining  doubt — on  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

"Answer  me.  Do  you  believe  that  the  soul  decays  with 
the  body  ;  or  if  you  do  not,  when  this  perishable  form 
mingles  with  its  parent  earth,  where  goes  the  soul  which 
now  actuates  its  movements .''  Perhaps,  it  wastes  its  fervent 
energies  in  tasteless  apathy  or  lingering  torments." 

"Matilda,"  returned  Zastrozzi,  "think  not  so;  rather 
suppose,  that  by  its  own  innate  and  energetical  exertions 
this  soul  must  endure  for  ever,  that  no  fortuitous  occur- 
rence, no  incidental  events,  can  affect  its  happiness  ;  but, 
by  daring  boldly,  by  striving  to  verge  from  the  beaten  path, 
whilst  yet  trammelled  in  the  chains  of  mortality,  it  will 
gain  superior  advantages  in  a  future  state." 

"  But  religion  !     Oh,  Zastrozzi  !  " 

"I  thought  thy  soul  was  daring,"  replied  Zastrozzi,  "I 
thought  thy  mind  was  towering  ;  and  did  I  then  err?  .... 
Oh,  yield  not  yourself,  Matilda,  thus  to  false,  foolish,  and 
vulgar  prejudices!  .  .  .  ." 

The  foregoing  passage,  one  of  those,  no  doubt, 
taxed  by  the  reviewers  with  immorality,  is 
important  as  regards  the  genesis  of  the  theology 
and  philosophy  of  the  poet.  It  contains  germs 
of  the  atheism  of  Oxford,  and  the  theories  of 
"  Queen  Mab."  If  on  the  one  hand  Shelley 
reproves  the  coarse  Epicureanism  of  Zastrozzi, 
he  has  no  word  of  blame  for  his  metaphysical  and 
religious  teachings;  and  Zastrozzi's  theory  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  is  quite  the  same 
as  his  own  at  the  time.  He  looked  upon  im- 
mortality as  a  state  of  happiness  which  would 
be    proportioned    to   the    degree   of    energy    and 

E 


50     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

courage  exhibited  while  on  earth.     We  shall  find 
this  theory  again  in  "  Hellas." 

Meanwhile  Verezzi  remains  a  prey  to  despair, 
and  is  near  death.  A  physician  declares  that  a 
warmer  climate  is  his  only  chance  of  life.  Matilda 
proposes  that  of  Venetia,  where  her  castle  of 
Laurentini  is  situated,  amid  such  fantastic 
scenery  as  our  poet  loves  to  depict,  a  mysterious 
forest,  with  overhanging  granite  rocks  and  foam- 
ing cataracts.  Thither  does  Matilda  carry  her 
lurid  passion,  and  there  she  nurses  it  to  the  soft 
breathings  of  the  zephyrs  and  the  murmuring 
of  the  pine-trees,  or  to  the  mournful  music  of 
nuns  chanting  their  requiem  for  a  departed  sister 
in  the  neighbouring  convent.  The  soft  warmth 
of  the  climate,  the  impassioned  attentions  of 
Matilda,  the  heavenly  sweetness  of  her  voice 
when  she  sings  to  the  accompaniment  of  her 
harp,  soften  and  melt  Verezzi's  heart. 

But  the  irrepressible  passion  "that  beats  in 
Matilda's  veins,"  could  not  be  satisfied  with  the 
sweet  sympathy  of  feeling  and  thought  which 
constitutes  the  love  ideal  of  Verezzi-Shelley,  and 
which  "calms  his  violent  emotions."  Thereupon 
Zastrozzi  again  comes  to  her  help,  and  suggests 
an  infallible  means  of  attaining  her  end,  and  of 
for  ever  effacing  the  image  of  Julia  in  Verezzi's 
heart.  This  romantic  plan  is  a  feigned  attack  on 
Verezzi  in  the  forest  ;  Matilda  throws  herself  before 
him  so  as  to  receive  the  blow,  and  is  wounded. 

Matilda's  snowy  arm  was  tinged  with  purple 
gore  ;  the  wound  was  painful,  the  blood  streamed 
fast  from  her  arm  and  tinged  the  rock  .  .  .  with 
a  purple  stain. 

The  stratagem  succeeds  to  admiration  ;  the 
sight  of  Matilda's  blood  melts  the  icy  heart  of 
Verezzi,  and  the  lovers  (still  in  the  forest)  su^ear 
eternal  fidelity.  "  Love  like  ours  wants  not  the 
vain  ties  of  human  laws.'^ 


SHELLEY  AS  A    WRITER  OF  ROMANCE.     51 

This  is  the  first  appearance  of  the  doctrine 
of  free  love,  and  of  that  of  the  immorality  of 
legal  sanctions  ;  a  doctrine  which  the  poet  was 
afterwards  to  practise  in  his  own  life,  and  which 
formed  his  most  unpardonable  offence  in  the  eyes 
of  England. 

The  crisis  occurs  at  Venice.  During  an 
evening  fête  on  the  Canal,  Verezzi  recognises  in 
a  gondola,  whose  "innumerable  flambeaux  .  .  . 
rivalled  the  meridian  sun,"  the  ethereal  form 
of  his  forgotten  Julia. 

While  he  is  gazing  in  an  ecstasy  Julia's  gondola 
speeds  on,  and,  "  indistinct  from  distance,"  mocks 
"  his  straining  eyeball." 

Meanwhile,  on  their  return  to  the  little  solitary 
house  in  which  they  are  dwelling,  Matilda  succeeds 
in  dispelling  the  despair  which  has  seized  on 
Verezzi  at  the  sight  of  Julia. 

"And  are  you  then  mine — mine  for  ever.''" 
she  rapturously  exclaims. 

"  Oh  !  I  am  thine — thine  to  all  eternity," 
returns  Verezzi,  as  he  raises  to  his  lips  the  cup 
Matilda  has  filled  for  him  ;  but  on  a  sudden 
the  goblet  falls  from  his  hands,  he  seizes  his 
dagger.  .  .  .  Julia  stands  before  him  !  She  tries 
in  vain  to  wrest  the  dagger  from  his  grasp,  he 
plunges  it  into  his  heart  and  dies. 

Matilda,  who,  until  that  moment,  had  pre- 
served a  terrible  calm,  throws  herself  on  Verezzi's 
breast,  draws  out  the  blood-stained  poignard,  and, 
seizing  the  unhappy  Julia  by  the  hair  as  she 
lies  fainting  on  the  ground  near  the  corpse  of 
Verezzi,  she  stabs  her  rival  in  the  breast  over 
and  over  again  until  not  a  breath  remains.  Ex- 
hausted by  passion,  she  flings  away  the  weapon, 
and,  with  fearful  calmness,  gazes  gloomily  on 
the  terrible  spectacle.  Julia's  "head  reclined  on 
Verezzi's  bosom,  and  even  in  death  her  angelic 
features  were  pervaded  with  a  smile  of  affection." 

E  2 


52     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

'  At  this  awful  moment  Matilda's  religious  fears 
return  to  assail  her,  and  restrain  her  from  adding 
suicide  to  her  crimes.*  "  And  is  it  for  this,  for 
horror,  for  torments  such  as  these,  that  He  whom 
monks  call  All-Merciful  has  created  me  ?  " 

In  spite  of  her  atheism  she  trembles  at  the 
thought  of  a  future  life,  and  a  voice  whispers 
to  her  soul:  "Thou  canst  never  die!" 

In  contrast  with  the  superstitious  terrors  of  a 
woman's  soul,  Shelley  now  shows  us  in  Zastrozzi 
the  unshaken  firmness  of  true  atheism.  While 
Matilda,  who  has  been  summoned  before  the 
Inquisition,  acknowledges,  in  the  presence  of 
approaching  death,  the  falseness  of  Zastrozzi's 
arguments,  and  urges  him  to  join  her  in  repent- 
ance, Zastrozzi  proudly  rejects  all  religious  belief, 
dies  satisfied  with  having  kept  his  oath,  and 
proclaims,  before  judges  and  executioners,  the 
negation  of  the  Divinity. 

"  I  intend,"  he  says,  "to  meet  death,  to  encounter  annihi- 
lation, with  tranquillity.  Am  I  not  convinced  of  the  non- 
existence of  a  Deity  ?  Am  I  not  convinced  that  death  will 
but  render  this  soul  more  free,  more  unfettered  ?  Why  need 
I  then  shudder  at  death  ?  Why  need  any  one  whose  mind 
has  risen  above  the  shackles  of  prejudice,  the  errors  of  a 
false  and  injurious  superstition  ?  " 

In  "  Laon  and  Cythna,"  f  Laon,  face  to  face 
with  the  stake,  speaks  with  more  poetry  and 
eloquence  ;  but  the  thought  is  the  same.  One 
feels  that  Shelley  in  his  heart  applauds  the 
sentiments  of  Zastrozzi,  and  admires  the  martyr 
to  conscience  who  has  for  death  only  '^  a  smile 
of  most  disdainful  scorn."  Zastrozzi  is  the 
prototype  of  Laon  and  of  Prometheus. 

In  this  same  year  (1809)  Shelley  was  at  work 

*  In  "  The  Cenci"  Beatrice  in  like  manner  shrinks  from 
suicide  for  the  same  reason. 

t  "  Laon  and  Cythna,''  Canto  XL,  Stanzas  15-25. 


SHELLEY  AS  A    WRITER  OF  ROMANCE.     53 

on  a  second  romance,  which  was  to  be  brought 
out  in  three  volumes.  "  If  Jock,"  *  he  gaily 
writes,  "  will  not  give  me  a  devil  of  a  price  for 
my  new  poem  {'  The  Wandering  Jew  '),  and  at 
least  sixty  pounds  for  my  romance,  the  dog 
shall  not  have  them/' 

But  "  the  dog  "  declined,  and  the  novel  passed 
into  the  hands  of  Stockdale.f  It  was  published 
at  the  author's  expense  in  December,  18 10,  under 
the  title  of  "  St.  Irvyne  ;  or.  The  Rosicrucian. 
By  a  Gentleman  of  Oxford  University."  (Shelley 
had  been  at  Oxford  since  the  end  of  October.) 
In  spite  of  the  attractiveness  of  the  title,  on 
which  the  young  novelist  had  reckoned,  the 
book  had  no  success,  and  the  edition  was  still 
on  the  publisher's  hands  in  1822. 

This  second  novel  also  was  suggested  to 
Shelley  by  a  work  of  Godwin's  called  "  St. 
Leon,"  "which  Shelley  immensely  admired.  He 
read  it  till  he  believed  that  there  was  truth  in 
alchymy,  and  the  Elixir  Vitœ  "...  and  he 
believed  also  "  in  the  *  Panacea.'  He  used  to 
cite  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Franklin,"  and  quote 
Condorcet  on  the  subject. 

The  hero  of  this  novel  is  a  fresh  incarnation 
of  Shelley  himself,  still  more  transparent  than 
the  one  we  have  discovered  in  "  Zastrozzi."  He 
is  a  young  and  high-souled  poet,  the  heir  of  a 
wealthy  and  powerful  German  prince,  who  is 
separated  from  his  country  by  an  insurmountable 
barrier,  and  who  lives  only  for  freedom  and  inde- 
pendence.    Wolfstein,  such  is  his  name,  is  under 

*  John  Robinson,  publisher  of  "  Zastrozzi." 
t  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  debt  Shelley  incurred  to 
his  publisher,  Stockdale,  according  to  whom  it  had  reached 
;^3oo  in  1826.  Stockdale  has  given  an  account  of  his 
relations  with  Shelley  in  some  curious  notes,  entitled 
"  Stockdale's  Budget,"  which  have  been  very  impartially 
noticed  in  an  article  by  Mr.  Richard  Garnett  in  Macmillan  s 
Magazine,  "  Shelley  in  Pall  Mall,"  II.  p.  100. 


54     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

the  mysterious  influence  of  a  kind  of  magician, 
the  Rosicrucian  Ginotti,  who  is  the  personification 
of  conscience,  and  of  the  fatahty  of  which 
Wolfstein  is  the  victim. 

The  action  of  the  story  is  double  and  alternate, 
and  would  be  somewhat  difficult  to  analyse  ;  there 
is  even  less  unity  and  sequence  than  in  "Zastrozzi." 
We  are  taken  by  enchantment  from  Italy  to 
Switzerland  or  Bohemia  ;  the  characters  appear 
and  disappear  like  puppets,  according  to  the 
caprice  of  the  author.  Stockdale,  after  printing 
the  book,  discovered  rather  late  that  there  was 
no  dcno2ieinent,  and  that  all  the  heroes  of  the  story, 
like  those  in  some  fantastic  ballads,  vanish  without 
leaving  a  trace  behind. 

The  theories  first  enunciated  in  '^Zastrozzi'' 
are  more  clearly  formulated  in  "  St.  Irvyne." 

Wolfstein,  like  Verezzi,  loves  a  noble  lady, 
Megalena  di  Metastasio,  whom  he  has  saved  from 
the  hands  of  Alpine  brigands.  He  takes  her  to 
Genoa,  and  there  asks  her  to  become  his  wife, 
but  without  any  religious  or  civil  ceremony. 
Megalena  is  easily  persuaded  by  the  eloquence 
of  her  lover. 

"  Yes,"  exclaimed  Megalena,  "  yes,  prejudice  avaunt  ! 
Once  more  reason  takes  her  seat,  and  convinces  me  that  to 

be  Wolfstein's  is  not  criminal Be  mine,   then,  and 

let  our  affection  end  not  but  with  our  existence  !  " 

"  Never,  never  shall  it  end  !"  enthusiastically  exclaimed 
Wolfstein.  "  Never  !  What  can  break  the  bond  formed  by 
congeniality  of  sentiment,  cemented  by  an  union  of  soul 
which  must  endure  till  the  intellectual  particles  which  com- 
pose it  become  annihilated?  Oh  1  never  shall  it  end  ;  for 
when,  convulsed  by  nature's  latest  ruin,  sinks  the  fabric  of 
this  perishable  globe  ;  when  the  earth  is  dissolved  away  and 
the  face  of  heaven  is  rolled  from  before  our  eyes  like  a  scroll, 
then  will  we  seek  each  other,  and  in  eternal,  indivisible, 
although  immaterial  union  shall  we  exist  to  all  eternity.'' 

As  we  peruse  "  St.  Irvyne,"  we  cannot  help 
tracing  the  history  of  the  author  written  before- 


SHELLEY  AS  A    WRITER  OF  ROMANCE.     55 

liand  in  mysterious  presentiment.  Shelley's  life 
is  little  more  than  the  realisation  of  the  principal 
adventures  of  this  strange  romance.  Like  Wolf- 
stein,  he,  too,  is  to  save  a  young  girl  from  the 
prison  of  school  and  the  prison  of  home  ;  he  is  to 
expound  to  his  chosen  bride  the  metaphysics 
of  free  and  eternal  love,  and  will  lead  her  to 
share  his  sentiments.  Like  Wolfstein,  he  is  to 
weary  of  his  first  choice,  and  will  seek  elsewhere 
for  a  worthier  object  of  his  love.  It  almost  seems 
to  us  that  in  depicting  Wolfstein,  he  had  either  a 
prescience  of  his  own  future,  or  he  identified  him- 
self by  the  force  of  his  imagination  so  entirely 
with  the  hero  of  his  creation,  that  he  realised 
the  conception  in  his  own  life.  He  wrote  about 
this  time  to  Godwin,  saying  :  "  After  being  a 
reader,  I  am  now  a  writer  of  novels  ;  "  he  might 
have  added,  "  and  I  am  about  to  live  one." 

In  "  St.  Irvyne  "  as  in  "  Zastrozzi  "  Shelley 
has  contrasted  the  weakness  of  a  soul  terrified 
by  superstition  with  the  fearless  serenity  of  a 
soul  truly  enfranchised  from  all  prejudice,  and 
from  every  religious  creed.  Ginotti  seduces  a 
young  orphan  girl  whose  conventual  education  and 
superstitious  beliefs  leave  her  defenceless  before 
the  fascinations  of  the  Rosicrucian.  Ginotti's 
theories  on  love  and  marriage  are  of  course  the 
same  as  Wolfstein's,  only  he  expounds  them  still 
more  crudely  :  "  Why  are  we  taught  to  believe 
that  the  union  of  two  who  love  each  other  is 
wicked,  unless  authorised  by  certain  rites  and 
ceremonials  which  certainly  cannot  change  the 
tenour  of  sentiments  which  it  is  destined  that 
these  two  people  should  entertain  for  each- 
other  ?  " 

To  this  question  Eloise  de  St.  Irvyne  ingenu- 
ously replies  that  God  has  so  willed  it.  Such 
an  answer  fills  the  Rosicrucian  with  indignation. 
"  Do  not  you  think  it  an  insult  to  two  souls,  united 


56  SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

to  each  other  in  the  irrefragable  covenants  of 
love  and  congeniality,  to  promise  in  the  sight 
of  a  Being  whom  they  know  not,  that  fidelity 
which  is  certain  otherwise  ?  " 

Poor  Eloise  vainly  exclaims  :  "  But  I  do  know 
that  Being,  and  when  I  cease  to  know  Him,  may 
I  die  !  I  pray  to  Him  every  morning  and  night  ; 
I  love  and  adore  Him  !" 

She  is  overcome  by  the  arguments  of  Ginotti, 
and  falls. 

The  unhappy  girl,  after  paying  dearly  for  her 
weakness,  and  being  infamously  deserted  by  the 
Rosicrucian,  is  sheltered  by  an  Irishman,  a  pattern 
of  humane  and  chivalrous  virtue.  He  too  is 
another  incarnation  of  Shelley,  and  like  him  is 
under  the  ban  of  a  father's  curse.  He  may  not 
return  to  England  unless  formally  married. 

How  will  he  act .-'  Like  Shelley  at  a  subse- 
quent period,  he  will  marry,  but  will  maintain  his 
theory  of  marriage. 

"  I  consider  it  a  human  institution  ;  I  regard 
it  but  as  a  chain  for  the  body,  that  still  leaves 
the  soul  unfettered.     It  is  not  so  with  love." 

Thus  in  "St.  Irvyne"  we  find  that  the  philo- 
sophical theories  of  Zastrozzi  have  become  accen- 
tuated, and  we  approach  the  time  when  the 
novelist,  having  become  a  poet,  will  proclaim 
them  under  his  own  name.  "  Queen  Mab  "  and 
"  Laon  and  Cythna"  are  but  their  poetical 
development.* 

Meanwhile   it  would  appear  that   Shelley  did 

*  "St.  Irvyne"  had  also  its  reviewers.  The  British 
Critic  of  January,  1811,  concludes  a  brief  summary  thus  : 

"  Some  readers  will  perhaps  be  satisfied,  and  will  proceed 
no  farther.  They  who  do,  will  find  the  cavern  of  Gil  Bias 
with  very  little  variation  of  circumstance,  a  profusion  of 
words  which  no  dictionary  explains,  such  as  tincvasible, 
bandit^  eti-Jiorrored,  descriptions  wilder  than  are  to  be  found 
in  Radcliffe,  and  a  tale  more  extravagant  than  the  '  St.  Leon'' 
of  Godwin." 


SHELLEY  AS  A    WRITER  OF  ROMANCE.     57 

not  attain  to  his  definitive  convictions  without 
a  violent  struggle.  We  see  many  traces  in  "  St. 
Irvyne  "  of  the  strife  in  the  poet's  soul  between 
faith  and  incredulity,  before  philosophy  won  the 
battle  for  the  god  of  Lucretius  and  of  Pliny.  The 
pages  that  record  this  quasi-confession  are  marked 
with  so  much  individuality,  with  such  fervour  of 
emotion,  that  it  is  difficult  to  discern  nothing 
more  in  them  than  an  exercise  in  rhetoric. 
Shelley's  originality,  besides,  is  so  plainly  marked, 
his  intellect  and  style  are  so  clearly  and  strongly 
revealed,  that  we  have  no  hesitation  in  quoting 
the  passage  as  a  remarkable  specimen  of  his 
earliest  poetical  prose.* 

Poetical  prose,  however,  no  longer  suffices 
Shelley  ;  one  of  the  curiosities  of  "  St.  Irvyne  " 
is  the  verse  scattered  throughout  its  pages.  Every 
character  is  a  poet  ;  Wolfstein,  Megalena,  Stein- 
dolph,  a  brigand,  take  it  in  turns  to  recite  his 
best  compositions  when  at  Eton.  The  verses 
no  doubt  deserve  severe  criticism  on  the  score 
of  technical  perfection  when  compared  even  with 
"  Queen  Mab,"  but  they  are  none  the  less  interest- 
ing as  being  the  first  eff"usions  of  what  may  be 
called  the  purely  romantic  period  of  Shelley's 
genius.  One  of  them,  indeed,  has  a  peculiar 
interest,  for  we  find  Shelley,  for  the  first  time, 
anxious  to  emulate  the  great  poet  who  was  des- 
tined to  become  his  friend — Lord  Byron.  "  Plours 
of  Idleness  "  had  appeared  in  1807.  Shelley  read 
the  verses,  and  desired  to  emulate  the  young 
poet  whose  first  appearance  in  print  had  so  ve- 
hemently aroused  public  attention.  Two  lines  ot 
"  Lachin-y-Gair  "  remained  in  his  memory,  and  he 
used  them  in  the  piece  to  which  we  allude. 
Shelley  could  never  have  imagined  that  one  day 
he  would  be  taunted  with  that  innocent  plagiarism 

*  Appendix  I. 


58      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

as  a  dire  orfencc,=i=  and  that  the  conclusion  would 
be  drawn  that  Byron's  "  Hours  of  Idleness  "  might 
''be  styled  the  'horn-book'  from  which  he  had 
acquired  the  rudiments  of  the  art  of  poesy." 

At  a  later  period,  Shelley  more  than  once  felt 
a  renewed  attraction  towards  romantic  prose..  Un- 
fortunately there  remain  of  this  only  a  {ç:\\r 
sketches  and  some  detached  pieces,  which  excite 
our  regret  that  the  demon  of  verse  did  not  suffer 
him  to  proceed  farther.  Those  exquisite  pages 
are  like  marvellously  sculptured  stones,  waiting 
vainly  for  the  master-hand  that  wrought  them,  to 
give  them  their  own  place  in  the  building  that  is 
for  ever  suspended. 

*  "The  Real  Shelley,"  I.,  p.  i66. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

FIRST   POETICAL    ESSAYS  AND   FIRST   LOVE — 
1809-181O. 

During  the  year  1809-1810,  the  intentai  between 
Eton  and  Oxford  that  Shelley  passed  under  his 
father's  roof  was  full  of  a  truly  prodigious  intel- 
lectual activity.  He  occupied  himself  with  ro- 
mances and  poems,  with  scientific  and  experi- 
mental studies,  with  literary  and  metaphysical 
correspondence,  and^  nevertheless,  could  find 
leisure  for  journeys  to  Oxford  and  London,  for 
shooting-  parties^  and  for  endless  rambles  with 
his  cousin  Medwin  in  the  enchanted  forest  of  St. 
Leonard,  where 

The  adders  never  scynge, 
Nor  ye  nightyngales  synge. 

During  the  winter,  the  two  cousins  wrote 
together  in  alternate  chapters  the  commencement 
of  an  extravagant  romance,  in  which  a  hideous 
Avitch  played  the  principal  part.  The  portrait  of  this 
witch  passed  from  the  prose  tale  into  the  verse  of 
the  "  Wandering  Jew,"  with  which  they  occupied 
themselves  shortly  afterwards. 

Medwin  and  Shelley  had  picked  up  at  a 
book-stall  a  fragment  of  an  English  translation 
of  the  "  Wandering  Jew/'  by  Christian  Shubart. 


6o      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

This  fragment,  full  of  a  strange  and  wild  elo- 
quence, strongly  impressed  Shelley.  His  imagina- 
tion was  haunted  by  the  marvellous  legend,  and 
he  and  his  cousin  set  to  work  on  a  metrical 
romance. 

When  seven  or  eight  cantos  were  written, 
Shelley  sent  them  to  Campbell  *  for  his  opinion. 
Campbell  returned  them  with  the  comment  that 
they  contained  only  two  good  lines  : 

It  seemed  as  if  an  angel's  sigh 

Had  breathed  the  plaintive  symphony. 

"  This  criticism  of  Campbell's,"  says  Medvvin, 
''gave  a  death-blow  to  our  hopes  of  immortality." 

Notwithstanding  Campbell's  adverse  verdict, 
however,  the  manuscript  was  sent  to  Edinburgh 
to  be  printed.  There  it  remained  until  July,  183 1, 
when  part  of  it  appeared  in  Fraseras  Magazine. 
Unfortunately  that  part  was  written  by  Medwin, 
with  the  exception  of  a  song  at  the  end  of  the 
fourth  Canto,  which  Medwin  says  is  Shelley's, 
and  "  extremely  musical  "  : 

See,  yon  opening  rose 

Spreads  its  fragrance  to  the  gale  ! 
It  fades  within  an  hour  ; 

Its  decay  is  fast — is  pale. 
Paler  is  yon  maiden, 

Faster  is  her  heart's  decay  ; 
Deep  with  sorrow  laden, 

She  sinks  in  death — away. 

But  though  Shelley's  ''  Wandering  Jew  "  no 
longer  exists,  we  can  judge  by  his  frequent  use 
of  the  legend  in  his  poems  how  strongly  it  had 
taken  hold  of  his  imagination.  We  meet  with 
it  repeatedly  in  his  works  ;  in  "  Alastor,"  in 
"  Hellas,"  and  especially  in  "  Queen  Mab."  f 
According  to  Medwin,  the  episode  of  Ahasuerus 

*  Thomas  Campbell  (1777-1844),  author  of  "The  Plea- 
sures of  Hope"  and  of  "  The  Last  Man." 

+  Vol.  I.,  p.  57,  et  seq.     See  also  "Alastor." 


FIRST  POETICAL  ESSAYS,  FIRST  LOVE.     6i 

in    the   latter   is    only   slightly   altered   from    the 
original  "  Wandering  Jew." 

This  legend  of  the  wandering  Jew,  the 
victim  of  the  Galilean's  vengeance  ;  another  Pro- 
metheus persecuted  by  another  Jupiter  ;  this 
unmoved  witness  of  the  succession  of  religions 
and  human  institutions,  besides  being  a  piteous 
and  terrible  story,  presented  an  admirable  frame- 
work for  the  development  of  Shelley's  favourite 
theme  of  the  struggle  between  good  and  evil 
in  the  world,  and  the  successive  victories  and 
defeats  of  the  spirit  of  liberty  and  love  among 
mankind.  He  preceded  in  this  the  French 
philosopher-poet,  Edgar  Ouinet,  who  was  inspired 
by  the  same  spirit  and  is  certainly  akin  to  him, 
and  whose  "  Ahasuerus  "  and  "  Prométhée  "  have 
been  too  much  neglected.  Some  other  poems 
written  by  Shelley  at  the  same  period  appeared 
in  a  volume  entitled  "  Original  Poems  "  by  Victor 
and  Cazire,  published  at  Horsham  in  1810.  The 
edition,  consisting  of  fourteen  hundred  and  eighty 
copies  of  a  volume  containing  sixty-four  pages, 
had  a  curious  fate,  and  has  so  entirely  disappeared 
that  the  most  eager  search  on  the  part  of 
enthusiastic  Shelleyans  has  failed  to  discover 
a  trace  of  it.  A  week  after  its  publication,  when 
about  a  hundred  copies  were  in  circulation,  the 
publisher  discovered  that  this  collection  of  "  original 
poetry  "  contained  a  transcript  from  the  pages  of 
M.  G.  Lewis,  the  celebrated  author  of  "  The 
Monk."  He  immediately  complained  to  Shelley, 
who,  writes  Stockdale,  "with  all  the  ardour 
incidental  to  his  character,  which  embraced  youth- 
ful honour  in  all  its  brilliancy,  expressed  the 
warmest  resentment  at  the  imposition  practised 
upon  him  by  his  coadjutor,  and  entreated  me  to 
destroy  all  the  copies."  * 

*  This   volume,   too,   found    reviewers.      Articles    were 
written  on  it  both  in  the  Poetical  Re£;isiey  of  Fugitive  Poetry 


62      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

In  iSoS  Medvvin  had  met  a  young  girl  in 
North  Wales  who  was  destined  to  make  a  mark  in 
English  poetry — Felicia  Dorothea  Browne,  after- 
wards Mrs.  Hemans.*  The  girl-author,  then  in 
her  sixteenth  year,  had  just  brought  out  two 
volumes  of  verse,  "  Early  Blossoms,"  and  "England 
and  Spain  j  or,  Valour  and  Patriotism." 

"  It  was  impossible,"  says  Medwin,  "  not  to  be  struck 
with  the  beauty  (for  beautiful  she  was),  the  grace,  and 
charming  simplicity  and  naïveté  of  this  interesting  girl, 
and  on  my  return  from  Denbighshire,  I  made  her  and  her 
works  the  frequent  subject  of  conversation  with  Shelley. 
Her  juvenile  productions,  remarkable  certainly  for  her  age — 
and  some  of  those  which  the  volume  contained  were  written 
when  she  was  a  mere  child — made  a  powerful  impression 
on  Shelley,  ever  enthusiastic  in  his  admiration  of  talent  ; 
and  with  a  prophetic  spirit  he  foresaw  the  coming  greatness 
of  that  genius,  which  under  the  name  of  Hemans  after- 
wards electrified  the  world.  He  desired  to  become  acquainted 
with  the  young  authoress,  and  using  my  name,  wrote  to  her, 

for  1810-1811,  and  in  the  British  Critic  for  181 1.  The  first 
deplores  the  waste  of  paper  by  the  two  authors  of  this  down- 
right scribble  J  the  second,  while  praising  the  type,  and  after 
quoting  some  of  Cazire's  verses,  thus  sums  up  the  collection  : 
'•  It  consists  of  sentimental  verses  without  either  rhyme  or 
reason,  and  of  horrifying  tales  that  are  perfectly  absurd," 
These  reviews  have  been  discovered  recently  by  Mr.  Edward 
Dowden,  who  is  the  author  of  a  most  interesting  article  on 
Shelley's  early  writings  in  the  Cofitetnporary  Review  for 
September,  1844.  He  conjectures,  with  some  probability, 
that  the  name  of  Cazire,  although  the  sound  is  feminine,  inay 
only  be  a  disguise  for  that  of  Edward  Graham,  who  was  at 
that  time  a  close  friend  of  Shelley's,  and  an  ardent  sympa- 
thiser in  his  literary  pursuits.  Young  Graham  was  the  son 
of  a  French  émigré  of  high  family  who  had  sought  safety  in 
England,  where  he  had  married  a  lady,  a  direct  descendant 
of  Shakespeare.  He  was  a  clever  musician  and  a  pupil  of 
the  celebrated  Woelfi,  and  had  been  taken  into  his  house  by 
Shelley's  father  and  brought  up  by  him. 

*  1794-1835.  Mrs.  Hemans  was  principally  a  descriptive 
poet.  She  was  essentially  feminine  in  style,  and  was  in  con- 
sequence a  favourite  writer  with  women.  Gentle,  tender, 
and  melancholy,  she  might  have  taken  a  place  among  the 
best  lyric-writers  of  England  had  she  written  less. 


FIRST  POETICAL  ESSAYS,  FIRST  LOVE.     63 

as  he  was  in  the  habit  of  doinjj  to  all  those  who  in  any 
wav  excited  his  sympathies.  This  letter  produced  an  answer, 
and  a  correspondence  of  some  length  passed  between  them, 
which  of  course  I  never  saw,  but  it  is  to  be  supposed  that 
it  turned  on  other  subjects  besides  poetry  ;  I  mean,  that  it 
was  sceptical.  It  has  been  said  by  her  biographer,  that  the 
poetess  was  at  one  period  of  her  life,  as  is  the  case  frequently 
with  deep  thinkers  on  religion,  inclined  to  doubt  ;  and  it 
is  not  impossible  that  such  owed  its  origin  to  this  inter- 
change of  thought.  One  may  indeed  suppose  this  to  have 
been  the  case,  from  the  circumstance  of  her  mother  writing 
to  my  father,  and  begging  him  to  use  his  influence  with 
Shelley  to  cease  from  any  further  communication  with  her 
daughter — in  fact,  prohibiting  their  further  correspondence. 
Mrs.  Hemans  seems,  however,  to  have  been  a  great  admirer 
of  his  poetry,  and  to  have  in  some  measure  modelled  her 
style  after  his.  particularly  in  her  last  and  most  finished 
effusions,  in  which  we  occasionally  find  a  line  or  two  of 
Shelley's,  proving  that  she  was  an  attentive  reader  of  his 
works.  "  Poets,"  as  Shelley  says,  "  the  best  of  them,  are 
a  very  chameleonic  race,  and  take  the  colour  not  only 
of  what  they  feed  on,  but  of  the  very  leaves  over  which 
they  pass." 

Shelley  no  longer  spoke  of  Mrs.  Hemans  ; 
her  rose-water  lyrics  must  have  seemed  to  him 
very  vapid  and  colourless;  the  author  of  "Early 
Blossoms  "  had  learned  but  little  from  her  teacher, 
for  in  her  "  Sceptic  ^'  Mrs.  Hemans  repudiated  any 
leaning  towards  the  Satanic  School  of  Poetry. 
Shelley  probably  estimated  her  as  did  Lord 
Byron,  who  in  1820  wrote  :  "  Mrs.  Hemans  is  a 
poet,  but  too  stilted  and  too  much  given  to 
apostrophising." 

Shelley's  strong  convictions  were  henceforth 
combined  with  a  passionate  ardour  for  prose- 
lytism.  Women,  as  being  nearer  to  Nature, 
seemed  to  him  to  offer  the  fairest  field  for  the 
sowing  of  the  New  Gospel.*     He  had  begun  by 

*  Helen  Shelley  relates  in  one  of  her  letters  that  her 
brother  "  had  a  wish  to  educate  some  child.  A  little  acrobat 
who  came  to  the  back-door  to  display  her  wonderful  feats, 
attracted  him,  and  he  thought  she  would  be  a  good  subject 
for  the  purpose." 


64      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

exercising  his  apostolate  on  his  sisters  ;  to  them 
succeeded  Felicia  Browne,  next  his  cousin,  Harriet 
Grove,  and  shortly  afterwards  Harriet  Westbrook, 
his  future  wife. 

Love  itself  was  to  him  only  a  means  of  intellec- 
tual conquest  and  philosophical  propagandism. 

It  may  be  asked  whether  Shelley  was  ever 
beguiled  by  mere  passion,  by  Vernis  Pandemos, 
as  he  called  it,  and  whether  he  suffered  by  the 
deplorable  experience  to  which  Thornton  Hunt, 
one  of  his  biographers,  alludes  :  "  Accident  has 
made  me  aware  of  facts  which  give  me  to  under- 
stand that  in  passing  through  the  usual  curriculum 
of  a  college  life  in  all  its  paths  Shelley  did  not 
go  scatheless;  but  that  in  tampering  with  venal 
pleasures  his  health  was  seriously  and  not  tran- 
siently injured.  The  effect  was  far  greater  on 
his  mind  than  on  his  body." 

If  we  admit  on  this  uncorroborated  statement 
of  Thornton  Hunt  that  such  a  misfortune  did 
happen  to  Shelley,  the  only  effect  it  produced 
was  to  disgust  him  for  ever  with  every  kind  of 
vice,  and  to  confirm  him  in  the  pure  manner  of  life 
that  even  his  most  inveterate  detractors,  including 
Mr.  Jeaffreson  himself,  are  obliged  to  admit. 

Prostitution  was  always  the  object  of  Shelley's 
most  violent  denunciation.  To  him  it  was  the 
hateful  but  necessary  consequence  of  the  deviation 
from  natural  love  which  results  from  the  dogmas 
of  religion  and  the  conventions  of  society,  the 
necessary  equipoise  of  legal  prostitution,  the  sme 
qua  non  of  chastity,  that  virtue  of  people  who  are 
cheaply  virtuous. 

Chastity  is  "  a  monkish  and  evangelical  super- 
stition, a  greater  foe  to  natural  temperance  even 
than  unintellectual  sensuality."*  There  was  but 
one  remedy,  he   thought,  for  this  hideous  evil  :   a 

*  Notes  on  "  Queen  Mab."  See  also  a  strong  passage 
in  "  Peter  Bell  the  Third." 


FIRST  POETICAL  ESSAYS,  FIRST  LOVE.     65 

return  to   pure  love,  to  the  laws  of   natural   and 
free  love. 

The  great  characteristic  of  Shelley's  theories 
on  love  (and  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  his 
theories  were  the  sole  law  of  his  conduct)  was 
the  grand  principle,  that  in  the  human  heart  the 
ideal  of  love  is  inseparable  from  the  ideal  of 
intellect;  his  great  quest,  even  at  an  age  when 
the  spiritual  vision  is  ordinarily  obscured  by  the 
passions,  was  a  female  soul  in  harmony  with 
all  the  transcendent  aspirations  of  his  own,  a 
soul  which,  both  in  intellect  and  heart,  nay,  even 
in  action  if  necessary,  could  join  in  his  apostolate 
of  morality  and  humanity;  in  one  word,  like 
Balzac,  he  sought  for  a  "  true  believer."  But  he 
always  sought  vainly  for  such  a  soul  among  the 
living  women  whom  he  loved. 

And  some  were  fair— but  beauty  dies  away  ; 
Others  were  wise— but  honeyed  words  betray. 

It  is  probably  among  the  latter  that  he  placed 
Harriet  Grove,  his  first  love.  Medwin  has  left  us  a 
charming  sketch  of  this  young  cousin  of  Shelley's  : 

She  was  born,  I  think,  in  the  same  year  as  himself.  She 
was  hke  him  in  Hneaments — her  eyes,  her  hair,  her  features, 
they  said  were  like  to  his,  but  softened  all  and  tempered 
into  beauty.  When  I  think  of  Miss  Grove,  and  call  to 
mind  all  the  women  I  have  ever  seen,  I  know  of  none  that 
surpassed  or  could  even  compete  with  her.  She  was  like  one 
of  Shakespeare's  women,  like  some  Madonna  of  Raftaelle's. 

The  cousins  had  not  met  since  their  early 
childhood  until  the  summer  of  1810.  They  then 
spent  two  months  together;  a  mutual  passion 
sprang  up,  and  its  unfortunate  sequel  was  the  first 
love-wound   Shelley  received.  *     Shelley  initiated 

*  Charles  Henry  Grove,  Harriet's  brother,  gives  the 
following  recollections  of  the  period,  in  a  letter  dated  i6th 
February,  1857  : 

"  I  did  not  meet  Bysshe  again  until  I  was  fifteen  years 
old,  when  I  left  the  navy,  and  paid  a  visit  to  Field  Place, 

F 


€6     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

her  into  his  studies,  and  it  has  even  been  asserted 
that  she  wrote  some  chapters  of  "  Zastrozzi." 

A  correspondence  began  between  them  ;  but 
Harriet  soon  took  alarm  at  the  tone  of  Shelley's 
letters,  which  treated  of  speculative  subjects  and 
endeavoured  to  shake  her  religious  opinions  ; 
she  consulted  her  parents,  who,  recognising  a 
serious  danger  for  their  daughter  in  the  corre- 
spondence, put  an  immediate  end  to  it,  and 
relinquished  their  hopes  of  a  union  between  the 
young  cousins. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  none  of 
these  letters  of  Shelley  to  his  cousin  are  now 
in  existence,  nor  yet  any  of  those  to  Felicia 
Browne.*  It  would  be  curious  to  observe  the 
art  with  which  this  new  Abelard  mingled  love- 
talk  with  his  discussions  on  philosophy  and  theo- 
logy. On  this  occasion  too  his  letters  spoiled 
everything,  and  his  beautiful  cold-hearted  cousin, 
forgetting  the  hopes  she  had  allowed  Shelley  to 
cherish,  married  a  wealthy  Somersetshire  squire 
in  November,  1811.  Bysshe  suffered  acutely 
from  what  he  considered  her  infidelity.  He  felt 
justified  in  twice  describing  the  cousin  he  had 
loved  too  well  as  false  or  untrue  : 

One  whom  I  found  was  dear  but  false  to  me  ; 
The  other's  heart  was  like  a  heart  of  stone. 


with  my  father  and  mother,  Charlotte  and  Harriet.  Bysshe 
had  just  left  Eton,  and  was  at  home  with  his  sister  Elizabeth. 
He  was  at  this  time  more  attached  to  my  sister  Harriet 
than  I  can  express,  and  I  recollect  well  the  moonlight  walks 
we  four  had  at  Strode,  and  also  at  St.  Irvings  (the  '  St. 
Irvyne  '  of  the  novel).  After  our  visit  to  Field  Place,  we 
went  to  my  father's  house  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  where  we 
passed  a  very  happy  month.  Bysshe  was  full  of  life  and 
ardour,  and  delighted  with  his  successful  wooing  of  my 
sister." 

*  In  a  letter  to  Hogg,  Shelley  protests  he  had  no  other 
end  in  view  in  his  letters  to  his  cousin  than  to  discover 


FIRST  POETICAL  ESSAYS,  FIRST  LOVE.     67 

As  Shelley's  love  liad  been  passionate  and 
profound,  so  the  wound  was  deep  and  slow  to 
heal.  In  his  letters  to  Hogg  during  the  Oxford 
vacation -we  catch  an  echo  of  his  agony.  With 
anguish  in  his  soul  he  describes  the  fatal  steps 
leading  to  the  catastrophe. 

In  a  letter  dated  Field  Place,  Dec.  23,  1810, 
he  tells  Hogg  how  his  sister  sometimes  attem.pted 
to  plead  his  cause  with  her  cousin,  who  replied 
in  a  discreet  and  reasonable  fashion  not  indicative 
of  very  vivid  affection  : 

"  Even  supposing  I  take  your  representation  of  your 
brother's  qualities  and  sentiments — which,  as  you  coincide 
in  and  admire,  I  may  fairly  imagine  to  be  exaggerated, 
althougli  yoîi  may  not  be  aware  of  the  exaggeration — what 
right  have  /,  admitting  that  he  is  so  superior,  to  enter  into 
an  intimacy  which  must  end  in  delusive  disappointment 
when  he  finds  how  really  inferior  I  am  to  the  being  which 
his  heated  imagination  has  painted  ?" 

Dec.  26,  1810  :  '■  Circumstances  have  operated  in  such  a 
manner  that  the  attainment  of  the  object  of  my  heart  was 
impossible  ;  whether  on  account  of  extraneous  influences, 
or  from  a  feeling  which  possessed  her  mind  which  told  her 
not  to  deceive  another,  not  to  give  him  the  possibility  of 
disappointment." 

Jan.  3,  1811  :  "She  is  no  longer  mine!  She  abhors  me 
as  a  sceptic — as  what  she  was  before  1  " 

Jan.  II,  iSi  I  :  "  She  is  gone  !  She  is  lost  to  me  for  ever  ! 
She  is  married — married  to  a  clod  of  earth  ;  she  will  become 
as  insensible  herself.  All  those  fine  capabilities  will  moulder  !" 

For  a  moment  Shelley  even  contemplated 
suicide. 

At  a  subsequent  period,  when  the  wound 
was  quite  healed,  he  would  recall,  not  without 
pleasure,  that  first  unfolding  of  a  love  from  which 
disenchanting  reality  had  never  effaced  the  bloom, 
and  which  remained  in  his  heart  as  a  scarcely 
unclosed  butf,  all  untouched  by  the  warmth  of 
a  summer  sun.      He    must   have    been   thinking 

whether  their  ioeas  coincided  sufiiciently  for  them  to  think 
senousiy  of  a  closer  and  lasting  union. 

F    2 


I 


68     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET, 

of   his    fondly   loved    cousin    in     1819,    when    he 
penned  the  following  lines  : 

And  where  is  truth  ?     On  tombs  ?     For  such  to  thee 
Has  been  my  heart;  and  thy  dead  memory 
Has  lain  from  childhood,  many  a  weary  year, 
Unchangingly  preserved  and  buried  there. 

In  a  fragment  that  has  come  down  to  us  of 
his  studies  preparatory  to  the  composition  of 
his  "  Epipsychidion,^^  he  depicted  the  two  cousins 
under  the  Italian  names  of  Cosimo  and  Fiordispina  : 

They  were  two  cousins,  almost  like  to  twins,  1 

Except  that  from  the  catalogue  of  sins  I 

Nature  had  razed  their  love,  which  could  not  be 

But  in  dissevering  their  nativity. 

And  so  they  grew  together,  like  two  flowers 

Upon  one  stem,  which  the  same  beams  and  showers 

Lull  or  awaken  in  the  purple  prime. 

But  until  these  hours  of  serene  reminiscence 
had  struck,  he  felt  bitterly  the  void  left  by 
what  he  calls  the  betrayal  of  his  beloved  cousin, 
and  laments  in  heart-broken  verse  his  desertioa 
and  his  loneliness  : 

THE    SOLITARY. 

Dar'st  thou  amid  the  varied  multitude 

To  live  alone,  an  isolated  thing .'' 

To  see  the  busy  beings  round  thee  spnng, 
And  care  for  rone  ;  in  thy  calm  solitude, 
A  flower  that  scarce  breathes  in  the  desert  rude 

To  Zephyr's  passing  wing .'' 

Not  the  swart  Pariah  in  some  Indian  grove. 
Lone,  lean,  and  hunted  by  his  brother's  hate 
Hath  drunk  so  deep  the  cup  of  bitter  fate 

As  that  poor  wretch  who  cannot,  cannot  love. 

He  bears  a  load  which  nothing  can  remove — 
A  killing,  withering  weight. 

He  smiles — 'tis  sorrow's  deadliest  mockery  ; 

He  speaks — the  cold  words  flow  not  from  his  soul,. 
He  acts  like  others,  drains  the  genial  bowl 

Yet,  yet  he  longs — although  he  fears — to  die. 

He  pants  to  reach  what  yet  he  seems  to  fly. 
Dull  life's  extremest  goal. 


FIRST  POETICAL  ESSAYS,  FIRST  LOVE.     69 

In  this  appallincf  solitude  he  beholds  Death 
approachino-,  and  offering  him  lov^  and  eternal 
rest  beyond  the  grave  : 

Say,  victim  of  grief,  wilt  thou  slumber  with  me  ? 

My  mansion  is  damp,  cold  silence  is  there; 

But  it  lulls  in  oblivion  the  fiends  of  despair. 

Not  a  groan  of  regret,  not  a  sigh,  not  a  breath 

Dares  dispute  with  grim  silence  the  empire  of  Death. 

I  offer  a  calm  habitation  to  thee — • 

Say,  victim  of  grief,  wilt  thou  slumber  with  me  ? 

Naught  waits  for  the  good  but  a  Spirit  of  Love 
That  will  liail  their  blessed  advent  to  regions  above  ; 
■For  Love,  mortal,  gleams  through  the  gloom  of  my  sway, 
And  the  shades  which  surround  me  fly  fast  at  its  ray. 
Hast  thou  loved  ?    Then  depart  from  these  regions  of  hate 
And  in  slumber  with  me  blunt  the  arrows  of  Fate. 
I  offer  a  calm  habitation  to  thee — 
Say,  victim  of  grief,  wilt  thou  slumber  with  me  .'' 

To  this  reiterated  call  from  Death  the  poet 
replies  : 

Oh,  sweet  is  thy  slumber  !  oh,  sweet  is  the  ray 
Which,  after  thy  night,  introduces  the  day  ! 


I  hoped  that  I  quite  was  forgotten  by  all. 

Yet  a  lingering  friend  might  be  grieved  at  my  fall  ; 

And  duty  forbids,  though  I  languish  to  die, 

When  departure  might  heave  virtue's  breast  with  a  sigh. 

O  Death  I  O  my  friend  !  snatch  this  form  to  thy  shrine, 

And  I  fear,  dear  destroyer,  I  shall  not  repine  !  ■* 

The  serene  pleasures  of  friendship  were  at 
that  juncture,  and  frequently  afterwards,  a  con- 
solation to  Shelley  for  the  disappointments  and 
sufferings  of  love. 

*  "Death  :  A  Dialogue,"  i8ic.  The  friend  whose  affec- 
tion wins  back  the  poet  to  life,  and  whom  Shelley  identifies 
with  Virtue  herself,  was  Hogg,  who  will  soon  appear  in  our 
pages. 


CHAPTER   V. 

SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD — "  NECESSITY  OF  ATHEISM  '" 
— 181O-181I. 

"Oxford,"  says  Leigh  Hunt,  "has  not  always 
appreciated  the  favours  of  the  gods.  Oxford 
repudiated  Locke,  estranged  Gibbon,  expelled 
Shelley!" 

Nevertheless,  when  Shelley  entered  Oxford,, 
the  University  was  nominally  Liberal. 

Oxford  was  still  ringing  with  the  eloquent 
accents  of  Coppleston,  the  Professor  of  Poetry 
and  the  bold  champion  of  his  University  against 
the  attacks  of  the  Edinburgh  Reviewers,  who 
accused  her,  not  without  reason,  of  representing 
the  monastic  routine  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  her 
educational  system. 

But  we  should  err  in  complaining  of  Oxford's 

intolerance    towards   Shelley  ;    we    might  say    of 

'7    '    it  what  St.  Augustine  says  of  original  sin,  "  Felix 

culpa  !  " Tor  wrtTiouT'it  we  might  have  had  neither 

"  Laon  and  Cythna,"  nor  "  Prometheus  Unbound." 

"  At  the  commencement  of  Michaelmas  Term," 
says  Hogg,  "that  is  at  the  end  of  October,  in 
the  year  18  lO/!'"  I  happened   one  day  to  sit  next 

*  Shelley  had  matriculated  at  University  College  on 
April  loth,  iSio,  returnin<j  afterwards  to  Eton,  where  he- 
remaiaed  until  the  end  of  July. 


SHELLEY  AT  OXEORD.  71 

to  a  freshman  at  dinner  ;  it  was  his  first  appear- 
ance in  hall.  His  figure  was  slight,  and  his  aspect 
remarkably  youthful,  even  at  our  table,  where 
all  were  very  young.  He  seemed  thoughtful  and 
absent." 

Thomas  Jefferson  Hogg,  Shelley's  fellow- 
student  at  Oxford,  and  expelled  thence  with  him, 
his  inseparable  friend  and  his  biographer,  was 
too  closely  associated  with  Shelley's  life  for  us 
to  omit  a  sketch  of  his  remarkable  character.  He 
has  frequently  been  depicted  for  us  as  the  Mephis- 
topheles  of  another  Faust,  a  kind  of  demon 
incarnate  playing  with  the  young  poet  as  the 
cat  plays  with  the  mouse.  There  is  some  ex- 
aggeration in  this  picture  ;  in  order  to  appreciate 
Hogg's  influence  over  Shelley  at  its  true  worth, 
we  need  only  bear  in  mind  that  on  leaving  Eton 
the  latter  had  already  formed  very  decided 
opinions  on  all  the  great  questions  of  philosophy 
and  religion,  and  had  resolved  on  a  line  of  moral 
conduct  from  which  nothing  could  have  induced 
him  thenceforth  to  deviate. 

That  Hogg  and  Shelley  should  have  been 
mutually  attracted  by  their  very  diversity  is 
natural  enough,  but  there  were  on  the  other 
hand  sufficient  points  of  contact  between  the 
man  of  the  world,  the  Tory  sceptic,  and  the 
Republican,  the  confirmed  idealist,  to  explain 
their  sympathy  and  reciprocal  regard.  Without 
taking  into  account  the  moral  qualities  which 
they  shared  in  common,  their  thirst  for  know- 
ledge, their  love  of  philosophic  research  and 
literary  study,  a  burning  desire  to  write  and  to 
appear  in  print  was  sufficient  to  cause  intimacy 
between  two  young  men,  whose  maturity  of  mind 
and  purity  of  life  placed  them  apart  from  the 
common  crowd  of  students.  At  that  period  Hogg 
had  not  become  the  positive  and  cynical  character 
described  by  Trelavvney  in  his  "Records,"  despising 


72     SHELLEY-THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

poetry  and  imagination,  and  caring  for  no  other 
study  than  that  of  law.  In  the  early  years  of  his 
intimacy  with  the  poet,  Hogg  was  a  fervent  adept 
in  purely  literary  study,  and  was  as  deeply  de- 
voted to  Plato  and  the  Greek  tragedians  as  to 
Blackstone  or  Coke.  Mr.  Dowden  *  has  con- 
clusively proved  that  his  leanings  to  the  romantic 
were  much  more  pronounced  than  his  biography 
of  Shelley  would  lead  us  to  suppose. 

He  wrote  both  verses  and  novels.  At  Oxford 
he  competed  for  the  poetry  prize,  the  subject  being 
"The  Dying  Gladiator."  He  also  collaborated 
with  Shelley  in  the  composition  of  "  Leonora,'' 
a  fiction  founded  on  a  pathetic  incident  in  real 
life,  and  of  which  a  considerable  part  was  in  type, 
when  the  expulsion  of  the  friends  from  Oxford 
alarmed  the  printer  and  put  a  stop  to  the  work. 
In  1813  he  published  a  philosophical  novel  much 
admired  by  Shelley,  who  discerned  in  it  the  highest 
gifts  of  a  novelist  and  a  poet. 

Mr.  Rossetti,  in  our  opinion,  has  admirably 
described  Hogg  and  his  book  : 

"This  gentleman,"  he  says,  "belonged  to  a  family  of  high 
Torieyt  living  at  Norton,  near  Stockton-on-Tees,  and  was 
destined  for  the  conveyancing  branch  of  the  law.  .  .  .  We 
can  trace  in  his  book  the  character  of  a  robust  boti-vivant 
and  man  of  society,  with  a  great  contempt  for  bores  and 
crotchet-mongers  of  all  sorts,  and  a  generally  sardonic  or 


.  *  Coniempotary  Review,  September,  1884. 
+  With  his  accustomed  lightness,  occasionally  carried  to 
cynicism,  Hogg  speaks  of  his  own  family  in  regard  to  their 
politics  and  religion  in  the  following  terms  :  "As  to  my  own 
family  aid  my  immediate  connections,  we  were  ail  persons 
whose  first  toast  aiter  dinner  was,  invariably,  '  Church  and 
State!'  —  warm  partisans  of  William  Pitt,  of  the  highest 
Church,  and  of  the  high  Tory  party  ;  consequently  we  were 
anything  but  intolerant — we  were  above  suspicion,  above 
ordinances.  .  .  .  My  relatives  felt  that  they  had  margin  enough 
— plenty  of  sea-room  ;  that  whatever  mi^^ht  be  said  or  done, 
tlieir  good  principles  could  not  be  doubled.  .  .  .  If  the  'Age 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  75 

cynical  turn,  the  antipodes  of  anything-  'gushing'  or  any 
revolutionary  idealism,  tempered,  however,  by  a  deep  respect 
for  the  forms  and  monuments  of  intellect  consecrated  by 
experience.  That  an  acute  mind  of  this  calibre  should  at 
•once  have  accepted  Shelley  as  a  beautiful  soul  and  heaven- 
born  genius,  and  should  have  been  inspired  with  a  warm 
•enthusiasm  for  him,  such  as  neither  radical  divergences 
of  view,  nor  early  and  final  separation  .  .  .  could  avail  to 
bedim,  speaks  as  strongly  as  anything  for  the  poet's  intel- 
lectual and  personal  fascination.  .  .  .  The  aroma  of  personal 
knowledge  and  affection,  along  with  the  keen  zest  of  a 
raconteur  who  enjoys  every  oddity  and  reinforces  it  in  the 
telling^,  impart  a  peculiar  charm  to  these  Oxford  reminiscences 
— and  indeed,  spite  of  its  m  iny  flaws  and  perversities,  to  the 
whole  '  Life,'  the  suppression  of  whose  concluding  portion 
defrauds  the  admirers  of  Shelley  of  their  just  perquisites." 

For  our  own  part,  we  join  in  Mr?  Rossetti's 
regret  ;  in  reading  Hogg  Ave  have  enjoyed  the 
humour  of  which  he  speaks,  and  we  regret  that 
the  Hmits  of  our  work  do  not  allow  us  to  quote 
more  largely  from  him.  We  can  understand  what 
an  attraction  his  original,  disdainful,  and  exclusive 
intellect,  his  strong  mind,  his  adamantine  patience, 
as  Peacocke  says,  must  have  had  upon  Shelley, 
who  has  given,  in  a  letter  to  Mary  Gisborne,  an 
incisive  and  witty  sketch  of  the  discreet  yet  keen 
sceptic  and  fine  scholar  : 

You  will  see  Kogg  ;  and  I  cannot  express 
His  virtues  (though  I  know  that  they  are  great) 
Because  he  locks,  then  barricades  the  gate 
Within  which  they  inhabit.     Of  his  wit 
And  wisdom,  you'll  cry  out  when  you  are  bit. 
He  is  a  pearl  within  an  oyster  shell, 
One  of  the  richest  of  the  deep. 


of  Reason'  (Paine's)  had  been  republished  by  myself,  or  one 
of  my  earliest  friends,  the  world  would  have  supposed  tliat  it 
was  put  forth  merely  to  show  the  utter  futility,  and  impotence, 
and  vanity  of  the  autlior's  arguments."  The  above  gives  a 
painful  impression  of  the  sincerity  and  earnestness  of  the 
religious  and  political  convictions  of  the  Tories  of  those  days. 


74     SHELLEY^THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

To  return  to  Oxford  and  the  commons  table, 
where  Hogg  and  Shelley  conversed  together  like 
old  acquaintances,  and  entered  that  same  evening 
on  a  friendship  which  in  spite  of  occasional  clouds 
remained  warm,  devoted,  and  unchangeable  to  the 
last.  A  conversation  on  the  respective  merits 
of  German  and  Italian  poetry,  begun  at  table,  .was 
continued  in  Hogg's  rooms,  whither  he  invited  the 
freshman  to  come  for  wine.  Shelley,  finding  him- 
self in  company  with  a  cultivated  and  kindly 
spirit,  threw  off  his  reserve  and  soon  led  the  talk 
to  his  favourite  topic  of  natural  science. 

"As  I  felt  in  truth,"  continues  Hogg,  "but  a  slight 
interest  in  the  subject  of  his  conversation,  I  had  leisure  to 
examine,  and  J  may  add  to  admire,  the  appearance  of  my 
very  extraordinary  guest.  It  was  a  sum  of  many  contra- 
dictions. His  figure  was  slight  and  fragile,  and  yet  his  bones 
and  joints  were  large  and  strong.  He  was  tall  (nearly  five 
feet  eleven),  but  he  stooped  so  much  that  he  seemed  of  a  low 
stature.*  His  clothes  were  expensive,  and  made  according 
to  the  most  approved  mode  of  the  day  ;  but  they  were 
tumbled,  rumpled,  unbrushed.  'His  gestures  were  abrupt 
and  sometimes  violent,  occasionally  even  awkward,  yet  more 
frequently  gentle  and  graceful.  His  complexion  was  delicate, 
and  almost  feminine,  of  the  purest  red  and  while  ;  yet  he 

*  De  Ouincey,  in  sketching  a  portrait  of  Shelley,  relates 
that  he  remembers  having  seen  in  London  a  pen-and-ink 
likeness  of  the  poet  in  his  Oxford  gown  ;  the  sketch  exactly 
corresponded  with  a  verbal  description  he  had  once  heard, 
that  '■  he  looked  like  an  elegant  and  slender  flower,  whose 
head  drooped  from  being  surcharged  with  rain."' 

Besides  the  portrait  mentioned  by  De  Ouincey,  four 
others  are  known  to  have  been  taken  :  an  engraving  of 
Shelley  as  a  child,  from  a  drawing  attributed  to  the  Due  de 
Montpensier,  and  published  by  Colnaghi  in  1879  ;  an  oil 
painting  by  Miss  Curran,an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  the  poet, 
in  181S-19,  and  now  in  the  possession  of  Sir  Percy  ShcUeyj 
his  son  ;  a  water-colour  by  his  friend  Williams,  that  has 
now  unfortunately  disappeared  ;  and  lastly,  a  portrait  in 
oils,  painted  alter  death  by  Clint,  froni  Miss  Curran's 
portrait,  aided  by  the  recollections  of  Mrs.  Shelley  and 
her  friend  Mrs.  Williams,  "a  poitrait,''  savs  Trehiwncy, 
"  that  those  who  knew  Shelley  in  the  List  year  of  his  life 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  75 

was  tanned  and  freckled  by  exposure  to  the  sun,  having 
passed  the  autumn,  as  he  said,  in  shooiinj:;.  His  features, 
his  whole  fice,  and  particularly  his  head,  were  in  fact 
unusually  small  ;  yet  the  last  appeared  oi  a  remarkable  bulk, 
for  his  hair  was  lonj^  and  bushy,  and  in  fits  of  absence,  and 
in  the  agonies  (if  I  may  use  the  word)  of  anxious  thought,  he 
often  rubbed  it  tiercely  with  his  hands,  or  parsed  his  fingers 
quickly  throu>j;h  his  locks  unconsciously,  so  that  it  was 
singularly  wild  and  rough.  In  times  when  it  was  the  mode 
to  imitate  stage-coachmen  as  closely  as  possible  in  costume, 
and  when  the  hair  was  invariably  cropped  like  that  of  our 
soldiers,  this  eccentricity  was  very  striking.  His  features 
were  not  svmmetrical""  (the  mouth  perhaps  excepted),  yet 
was  the  effect  of  the  whole  extremely  powerful.  They 
breathed  an  animation,  a  fire,  an  enthusiasm,  a  vivid  and 
preternatural  intelligence,  that  I  never  met  with  in  any  other 
countenance.  Nor  was  the  moral  expression  less  bciutiful 
than  the  intellectual  ;  for  there  was  a  softness,  a  delicacy,  a 
gentleness,  and  especially  (though  this  will  surprise  many) 
that  air  ot  profound  religious  veneration  that  characterises 
the  best  works,  and  chiefiy  the  frescoes  (and  into  these  they 
infused  their  whole  souls)  of  the  great  masters  of  Florence 
and  of  Rome.  I  recognised  the  very  peculiar  expression 
in  these  wonderful  productions  long  afterwards,  and  with  a 
satisfaction  mingled  with  much  sorrow,  for  it  was  after 
the  decease  of  him  in  whose  countenance  I  had  first 
observed  it." 


thought  very  like  him."  An  engraving  of  the  latter  forms 
our  frontispiece.  Mr.  Jeafifreson  has  followed  what  he  calls 
the  hhelley  legend  even  to  these  portraits.  He  devotes  ten 
pages  to  proving  that  not  one  of  them  is  a  faithful  likeness 
of  the  poet,  because  in  all  of  them  the  most  distinctive 
feature  of  his  face  is  absent — his  little  turned-up  nose,  as 
]\Ir.  Jeaffreson  expresses  it.  He  cannot  sufficiently  sneer 
at  the  unpoetical  little  nose,  and  at  the  touching  weakness 
of  two  women,  the  widow  and  the  friend,  idealising  their 
recollections  in  this  posthumous  ponrait,  "and  being 
especially  desirous,  that  on  the  historic  canvas  he  should  be 
endowed  with  a  nose  wholly  unlike  the  one  that  had  been, 
in  their  eyes,  the  great  blemish  of  his  earthly  tabernacle." 
Instead  of  his  ten  pages  of  burlesque,  Mr.  JcilTreson 
would  have  done  better  to  reproduce  for  us  a  bust  oi  vShelley 
of  which  he  speaks  as  still  existent,  and  as  "protesting, 
dumbly  eloquent,  against  the  unf  lithfulness  of  the  portraits." 
""  Shelley  him.-cif  makes  fun  in  liib  letters  of  what  he 
calls  "  a  Ltile  turn-up  nose." 


76     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

The  first  meeting  of  these  two  essentially 
different  minds,  mutually  attractive  by  their  very 
contrast,  was  decisive.  Hogg  and  Shelley  could 
not  thenceforth  exist  apart  ;  they  were  called 
the  inseparables. 

After  spending  the  morning  in  private  study, 
Hogg  habitually  repaired  to  Shelley's  room,  and 
they  frequently  remained  together  until  a  late 
hour  of  the  night. 

If  the  weather  were  bad,  they  read,  wrote,  and 
conversed  indoors.  Their  favourite  studies  were 
"  Locke  on  the  Hum.an  Understanding,"  Hume's 
*'  Essays,"  the  "  Dialogues  "  of  Plato  in  Madame 
Dacier's  French  translation,  books  on  logic,  and 
the  Greek,  Latin,  and  English  poets. 

"  The  devotion,  the  reverence,  the  religion  with  which  he 
was  kindled  towards  all  the  masters  of  intellect,"  declares 
Hogg,  "  cannot  be  described.  The  irreverent  many  cannot 
comprehend  the  awe,  the  apathetic  worldling  cannot  imagine 
the  enthusiasm,  nor  can  the  tongue  that  attempts  only  to 
speak  of  things  visible  to  the  bodily  eye,  express  the  mighty 
emotion  that  inwardly  agitated  him,  when  he  approached  for 
the  first  time  a  volume  which  he  believed  to  be  replete  with 
the  recondite  and  mystic  philosophy  of  antiquity  ;  his  cheeks 
glowed,  his  ej'es  became  bright,  his  whole  frame  trembled, 
and  his  entire  attention  was  immediately  swallowed  up  in 
the  depths  of  contemplation.  .   .  . 

"  He  was  to  be  found  book  in  hand  at  all  hours  ;  reading 
in  season  and  out  of  season,  at  table,  in  bed,  and  especially 
during  a  walk  ;  not  only  at  Oxford,  in  the  public  walks  and 
High  Street,  but  in  the  most  crowded  tiioroughfares  of 
London.  Nor  was  he  less  absorbed  by  the  volume  that  was 
open  before  him,  in  Cheapside,  in  Cranbourne  Alley,  or  in 
Bond  Street,  than  in  a  lonely  lane  or  a  secluded  library. 
Sometimes  a  vulgar  fellow  would  attempt  to  insult  or  annoy 
the  eccentric  student  in  passing.  Shelley  always  avoided 
the  malignant  mterruption  by  stepping  aside  with  his  vast 
and  quiet  agility.  .  .  . 

"  i  have  never  beheld  eyes  that  devoured  the  pages  more 
voraciously  than  his  ;  I  am  convinced  that  two-tnirds  of  the 
period  of  driy  and  night  were  often  employed  in  reading. 
It  is  no  exaggeration  to  affirm  that  out  of  the  twenty-four 
hours  he  freq.ieatly  read  si.xteen.     At   Oxford  his  diligence 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  77 

was  exemplary,  but  it  greatly  increased  afterwards.  Few 
were  aware  of  the  extent,  and  still  fewer,  I  apprehend,  of  the 
profundity  of  his  reading  ;  in  his  short  life,  and  without 
ostentation,  he  had  in  truth  read  more  Greek  than  many  an 
aged  pedant  who,  with  pompous  parade,  prides  himself  on 
this  study  alone.  A  pocket  edition  of  Plato,  of  Plutarch,  of 
Euripides,  without  interpretation  or  notes,  or  of  the  Septua- 
gint,  was  his  ordinary  companion  ;  and  he  read  the  text 
straight  forward  for  hours,  if  not  as  readily  as  an  English 
author,  at  least  with  as  much  facility  as  French,  Italian,  or 
Spanish  ;  and  by  changing  the  position  of  the  words,  and 
occasionally  substituting  others,  he  would  transmute  several 
sentences  from  prose  to  verse,  to  heroic  or  more  commonly 
elegiac  verse  .  .  .  with  surprising  rapidity  and  readiness." 

In  fine  weather  they  took  long  walks,  dining 
together  afterwards  in  Shelley's  rooms.  They  thus 
made  acquaintance  with  the  beautiful  country 
round  O.Kford — Shotover  Hill,  Bagley  Wood,  the 
banks  of  the  Thames,  the  hills,  meadows,  and 
woods — wandering  into  farms  where  on  one  occa- 
sion the  poet  was  attacked  by  a  ferocious  dog, 
who  tore  off  the  skirts  of  his  brand-new  blue  coat  ; 
or  springing  over  a  ruined  wall  into  an  admirably 
kept  garden  where  there  was  no  foliage  save  the 
dark  leaves  of  evergreens,  w^icrc  scarcely  a  single 
wan,  autumnal  flower  lingered  and  languished  ; 
a  'garden  that  was  nevertheless  s}-mmetrically 
arranged  and  scrupulously  neat,  and  which  spoke 
of  peace  and  solitude,  and  the  ministering  presence 
of  gentle  human  hands.  Shelley  loved  to  wander 
in  that  enchanting  spot,  and  one  da}'  on  leaving  it 
he  could  not  refrain  from  speaking  to  Hogg  of  its 
sacred  peace,  which  no  doubt,  said  he,  owed  its 
attraction  to  the  presence  of  some  good  and 
beautiful  woman.  The  beautiful  woman  dreamed 
of  by  Shelley  is  to  become  the  Enchantress  of  the 
garden  he  describes  in  one  of  his  most  exquisite 
poems,  "  The  Sensitive  Plant." 

In  the  course  of  these  long  rambles,  Shelley, 
to  Hogg's  great  anxiety,  would  frequently  amuse 
himself  by  two  favourite  pastimes,  pistol-shooting 


78     SHELLEY— THE  2/ AN  AND   THE  POET. 

and  sailing  paper  boats.  He  gave  up  the  former 
out  of  regard  for  Hogg. 

He  particularly  liked  lingering  on  the  banks 
of  Shotover  Pond,  and  night  would  sometimes 
overtake  him,  either  repeating  verses  aloud,  or 
in  discussions  with  his  friend  on  themes  that 
had  no  connection  with  surrounding  objects. 

In  the  correct  and  official  atmosphere  of 
Oxford,  so  original  and  refined  a  nature  must 
of  necessity  have  appeared  strange  and  eccentric. 
Mr.  Jeaffreson  abounds  with  stories  of  the  poet's 
eccentricities.  His  Byronic  collars,  turned  down 
over  a  blue  coat  with  glittering  buttons  ;  his  long 
and  bushy  hair  under  the  "little  round  hat  upon 
his  little  round  head;"  his  habit  of  reading  or 
disputing  aloud  in  the  High  Street  or  public 
places  of  Oxford,  were  sources  of  amusement  to 
his  fellow  students.  But  we  seek  in  vain  for 
any  authority  to  warrant  the  conclusion  of  his 
biographer  that  those  eccentricities  were  intended 
to  attract  notice  and  to  display  his  superiority. 
Hogg  relates  a  charming  anecdote  which  to 
Mr.  Jeaffreson  seems  conclusive,  but  is  in  fact 
an  admirable  picture  of  Shelley  at  a  time  when 
he  was  deeply  interested  in  discussing  philosophy 
with  his  friend,  particularly  the  Platonic  .  theory 
of  the  pre-existence  of  souls. 

"One  morning,"  writes  Hogg,  "we  had  been  reading 
Plato  together.  ...  In  the  middle  of  Magdalen  Bridge  we 
met  a  woman  with  a  child  in  her  arms.  .  .  .  'Will  your 
baby  tell  us  anything  about  pre-existence,  madam.?'  he 
asked  in  a  piercing  voice  and  with  a  wistful  look.  The 
mother  made  no  answer.  .  .  .  '  Will  your  baby  tell  us  any- 
thing about  pre-existence,  madam?'  he  repeated  with  un- 
abated earnestness.  '  He  cannot  speak,  sir,'  said  the  mother 
seriously.  '  Worse  and  worse,'  cried  Shelley  ;  .  .  .  '  but 
surely  the  babe  can  speak  if  he  will,  for  he  is  only  a  few 
iveeks  old.  He  may  fancy,  perhaps,  that  he  cannot  ;  but  it 
is  only  a  silly  whim.  He  cannot  have  forgotten  entirely  the 
use  of  speech  in  so  short  a  time;  the  thing  is  absolutely 
impossible.'     '  It  is  not  for  me  to  dispute  with  you,  gentle- 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  79 

men,'  the  woman  meekly  replied;  ...  'but  I  can  safely 
declare  I  never  heard  liim  ppeak,  nor  any  child  of  his  age.' 
.  .  .  Shelley  pressed  the  boy's  fat  cheek  with  his  fingers.  .  .  . 
Shelley  sighed  deeply  as  we  walked  on.  *  How  provokingly 
close  are  those  new-born  babes!'  he  ejaculated;  'but  it  is 
not  the  less  certain,  notwithstanding  the  cunning  attempts 
to  conceal  the  truth,  that  all  knowledge  is  reminiscence. 
The  doctrine  is  far  more  ancient  than  the  times  of  Plato, 
and  as  old  as  the  venerable  allegory  that  the  Muses  are  the 
daughters  of  Memory  ;  not  one  of  the  nine  was  ever  said 
to  be  the  child  of  Invention.'  " 

There  was  a  certain  audacity  at  that  epoch 
in  liking  Plato  at  Oxford,  and  in  saying  so.  The 
teaching  of  the  schools  under  the  name  of  Aristotle 
was  held  in  honour  exclusively,  and  Aldrich's* 
Manual  contained  pretty  well  all  the  philosophy 
that  was  taught  at  the  University.  Shelley's 
aversion  from  a  system  of  pedantic  logic,  and 
arid  schooling  that  allowed  neither  liberty  to 
thought  nor  free  sway  to  the  imagination,  may 
be  conceived.  Those  professors,  blindly  following 
in  the  track  of  the  Middle  Ages,  seemed  to  him 
ghosts  from  another  world — "  very  dull  people." 

He  was  sent  for  one  morning  by  one  of  the 
tutors,  who  wanted  to  talk  to  him  about  his  studies. 
He  gives  the  following  account  of  the  interview 
to  his  friend  Hogg  : 

A  little  man  sent  for  me  this  morning,  and  told  me  in 
an  almost  inaudible  whisper  that  I  must  read. 

"  You  must  read,  you  must  read,"  he  repeated  in  his 
small  voice.  I  answered  that  1  had  no  objection.  He  per- 
sisted ;  so,  to  satisfy  him,  for  he  did  not  appear  to  believe 
me,  I  told  him  1  had  some  books  in  my  pocket,  and  I  began 
to  take  them  out.  He  stared  at  me,  and  said  that  was  not 
exactly  what  he  meant.  "  You  must  read  '  Prometheus 
Vinctus,'  and  Demosthenes'  '  De  Corona,'  and  Euclid." 
•Must  I  read  Euclid?"  I  asked  sorrowfully.  "  Yes,  cer- 
tainly ;  and  when  you  have  read  the  Greek  works  I  have 


*  See  an  amusing  allusion  to  the  Manual  in  Shelley's 
satire,  "  Peter  Bell  the  'J  hird." 


80      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

mentioned,  you  must  begin  Aristotle's  'Ethics/  and  then 
you  may  go  on  to  his  other  treatises.  It  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  be  well  acquainted  with  Aristotle."  This  he 
repeated  so  often  that  I  was  quite  tired,  and  at  last  I  said, 
"Alust  I  care  about  Aristotle?  What  if  I  do  not  mind 
Aristotle  ?  "...  and  I  left  him  in  great  perplexity. 

What  would  the  poor  tutor  have  said  could 
he  have  guessed  that  not  only  did  his  pupil  love 
and  read  Plato,  but  that  he  wrote  revolutionary- 
verses  in  behalf  of  "  the  dearest  interests  of 
universal  happiness/'  in  which  he  wedded  the 
spirits  of  Ravaillac  and  Charlotte  Corday,  and 
composed  an  epithalamium  for  that  mystical 
marriage,  which  ends  as  follows  : 

But  what  is  sweeter  to  Revenge's  ear 
Than  the  fell  tyrant's  last  expiring  yell  ? 

Yes  ;  than  love's  sweetest  blisses  'tis  more  dear 
To  drink  the  floatings  of  a  despot's  knell. 

This  wild  and  incoherent  rhapsody  bore  the 
following  title  of  Hogg's  invention  :  "Posthumous 
Fragments  of  Margaret  Nicholson.'" 

Peg  Nicholson,  a  mad  washerivoman,  had  attempted  to 
stab  King  George  III.  with  a  carving-knife.  The  episode 
has  long  been  forgotten  ;  but  at  that  time  it  was  fresh  in 
every  one's  memory.  The  poor  woman  was  still  alive  in 
Bedlam  ;  "  but  since  her  existence  must  be  uncomfortable, 
there  could  be  no  harm  in  putting  her  to  death,  and  in  creating 
a  nephew  and  administrator  to  be  the  editor  of  his  aunt's 
poetical  works." 

Chatterton,  one  of  Shelley's  great  favourites 
just  then,  had  set  the  fashion  of  such  literary 
mystifications  by  his  pseudo-Rowle}'. 

The  pseudo-Nicholson,  if  we  may  believe  Hogg 
and  Shelley  himself,*  had  a  great  success,  first  with 
Munday  the  publisher,  who  agreed  to  bring  out 

*  Shelley  writes  to  Graham,  Nov.  30,  1810:  "It  sells 
wonderfully  here,  and  is  become  the  fashionable  subject  of 
discussion." 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  8r 

the  volume  at  his  own  expense,  and  did  it  well, 
and  next  with  the  public  : 

We  used  to  meet  gownsmen  in  High  Street  reading  the 
goodly  vokime  as  they  walked — pensive,  with  a  grave  and 
sage  delight— some  of  them,  perhaps,  more  pensive,  because 
it  seemed  to  portend  the  instant  overthrow  of  ail  royalty, 
from  a  king  to  a  court-card.  It  was  indeed  a  kind  of  fashion 
to  be  seen  reading  it  in  public,  as  a  mark  of  a  nice  discern- 
ment, of  a  delicate  and  fastidious  taste  in  poetry,  and  the 
very  criterion  of  a  choice  spirit.  Nobody  suspected  or 
could  suspect  who  was  the  author  ;  the  thing  passed  off  as 
the  genuine  production  of  the  would-be  regicide.  What 
a  strange  delusion  to  admire  our  stuff,  the  concentrated 
essence  of  nonsense  ! 

Amid  all  this  declamatory  trash,  this  deluge 
of  romantic  and  revolutionary  effusions,  there 
are,  nevertheless,  some  pieces  not  lacking  in 
delicate  beauty  and  a  certain  Shelleyan  aroma; 
one  of  these  will  be  found  in  Appendix  II.,  "  Melody 
to  a  Scene  of  Former  Times." 

It  is  impossible  to  repress  a  smile  when  we 
remember  that  the  same  public  who  were  rapturous 
over  the  Posthumous  Fragments,  afterwards  dis- 
dainfully refused  to  glance  at  Shelley's  "  Pro- 
metheus Unbound,^'  or  his  '' Adonais."* 

Love-confidences  were  mingled  with  literary 
and  metaphysical  discussions.  Shelley  liked  to 
tell  his  friend  of  the  beauty  and  perfection  of  his 
cousin.  From  the  cousin  the  conversation  passed 
to  his  eldest  sister,  Elizabeth,  whose  letters,  inter- 
spersed with  verse,  were  so  charming.  Out  of 
friendship  for  Hogg,  Shelley  wished  to  influence 
his  sister  in  favour  of  the  man  he  judged  most 
worthy  of  her  ;  he  invited  him  to  spend  the  vaca- 
tion at  Field  Place   in  order   that    he   might   see 

*  Hogg's  testimony  must  not  be  taken  too  literally. 
Mr.  Dowden  exonerates  the  literary  public  of  Oxford  from 
such  want  of  discernment  by  quoting  from  Mr.  Slatter,  of 
the  publishing  firm  of  Munday  &  Slatter,  who  describes 
the  "Posthumous  Fragments  "as  "a  work  almost  still-born." 

G 


82      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

her,  win  her  heart,  and  make  her  his  wife.  It 
was  a  keen  disappointment  to  Shelley  that  the 
project  failed. 

Immediately  on  reaching  Field  Place  for  the 
Christmas  hohdays  in  iSio,  he  writes  to  his  friend 
Hogg: 

Stockdale  has  behaved  infamously  to  me;  he  has  abused 
the  confidence  I  reposed  in  him  in  sending  him  my  work,* 
and  he  has  made  very  free  with  your  character,  of  which  he 
knows  nothing,  with  my  father. 

Stockdale,  who  was  no  doubt  quite  as  anxious 
to  recover  from  Shelley's  father  the  amount  he  had 
expended  on  publishing  "St.  Irvyne"  as  he  was 
alarmed  at  the  infidel  tendencies  of  the  young 
author,  had  communicated  with  Mr.  Shelley  in 
order  to  warn  him  against  his  son's  danger  and  the 
influence  of  that  son's  friend. 

Mr.  Shelley  was  already  greatly  incensed 
against  his  son  by  reason  of  the  complaints  of 
Miss  Grove's  relations  ;  he  discerned  in  the 
Oxford  undergraduate  an  apostle  of  infidelity 
and  impiety,  and  trembled  for  his  own  daughters. 
Remonstrances  from  father  and  mother  were 
showered  on  Shelley;  correspondence  with  his 
cousin  was  prohibited  ;  he  was  forbidden  to  print 
anything  more  ;  there  was  even  an  intention 
of  removing  him  from  Oxford. 

*'  I  am  now,"  he  wrote  to  Hogg,  ''  surrounded,  environed 
by  dangers,  to  which  compared  the  devils  who  besieged  St. 
Anthony  were  all  inefficient.  They  attack  me  for  my  detest- 
able principles  ;  I  am  reckoned  an  outcast  ;  yet  I  defy  them 
and  laugh  at  their  ineffectual  efforts.  .  .  .  My  father  wished 
to  withdraw  me  from  college  ;  I  would  not  consent  to  it. 
There  lowers  a  terrific  tempest,  but  I  stand  as  it  were  on  a 
pharos,  and  smile  exultingly  at  the  vain  beating  of  the 
billows  below." 


*  Probably  a  philosophical  "  Dialogue,"  in  which  Shelley 
set  forlli  his  moral  and  religious  theories. 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  83 

These  domestic  altercations  served  but  to 
embitter  his  mind,  and  to  increase  his  hatred  of 
reh'gious  intolerance.  So  soon  as  he  had  over- 
come the  first  feelings  of  despondency,  he  accepted 
the  combat,  and  strong  in  the  purity  of  his 
intentions  and  the  sincerity  of  his  convictions,  he 
took  an  oath,  on  what  he  called  the  altar  of  per- 
jured love,  the  oath  of  Hannibal,  to  wage  war  to 
the  death  against  the  religious  fanaticism  that 
was  the  cause  of  all  his  suffering. 

I  think  it  is  to  the  benefit  of  society  to  destroy  the 
opinions  which  can  annihilate  the  dearest  of  its  ties.  .  .  . 
It  is  now  that  I  stand  in  need  of  all  my  art  ;  they  drive  me 
to  have  recourse  to  cunning. 

Yet  here  I  swear  —  and  as  I  break  my  oaths  may 
Infinity,  Etcrniiv  blast  me— here  I  swear  that  never  will 
I  forgive  intolerance  !  It  is  the  only  point  on  which  I  allow 
myself  to  encourage  revenge  ;  every  moment  shall  be 
devoted  to  that  object,  it  shall  be  a  lasting,  a  long  revenge  ! 
Oh,  how  I  wish  I  were  the  avenger — that  it  were  mine 
to  crush  the  demon,  to  hurl  him  to  his  native  hell  never 
to  rise  again,  and  thus  to  establish  for  ever  perfect  and 
universal  toleration  ! 

Under  circumstances  such  as  these,  when  Hogg 
was  denounced  to  Shelley's  father  as  the  evil 
genius  of  his  son,  it  was  difficult  to  set  about 
realising  the  Oxford  dreams.  Yet  Shelley  con- 
tinued to  encourage  his  friend's  hopes  of  making 
Elizabeth  Shelley  his  wife;  sending  him  some 
verses  she  had  written  on  the  bombardment  of 
Copenhagen,  reading  to  Elizabeth,  Hogg's  letters 
and  Hogg's  verses  in  which  he  compares  Shelley 
to  an  oak,  and  his  faithless  cousin  to  the  ivy 
that  destroys  the  tree;  while  Hogg  almost  en- 
gages himself  by  a  solemn  promise.  Shelley 
writes  to  him  gratefully  : 

How  can  I  find  words  to  express  my  thanks  for  such 
generous  conduct  with  regard  to  my  sister,  with  talents  and 
attainments  such  as  you  possess,  to  promise  what  I  ought 

G    2 


84      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

not  perhaps  to  have  required,  what  nothing  but  a  dear 
sister's  intellectual  improvement  could  have  induced  me  to 
demand  ? 

Towards  the  close  of  the  vacation,  however, 
Shelley's  father  became  somewhat  appeased,  and 
in  the  middle  of  January,  i8ii,he  condescended 
to  argue  with  the  youthful  theologian,  and  confer 
with  him  as  to  the  evidences  of  Christianity, 
It  was  even  agreed  that  at  Easter  the  terrible 
Hogg,  so  vilified  by  the  Pall  Mall  publisher, 
should  be  received  at  Field  Place. 

On  his  return  to  Oxford  at  the  beginning  of 
ï8ii,  Shelley  resumed  his  old  manner  of  life  with 
Hogg  ;  the  prospect  of  a  possible  union  between 
Hogg  and  Elizabeth  drawing  them  still  closer 
together.  They  renewed  with  delight  their  former 
habits  of  intimacy,  their  long  vigils  of  study, 
their  rambles,  their  reading  of  all  sorts,  their 
endless  arguments.  In  order  to  please  his  father, 
Shelley  had  promised  to  compete  for  the  Newdi- 
gate  Prize,  the  subject  being  the  Parthenon. 
Mr.  Shelley,  delighted  with  his  son's  excellent 
frame  of  mind,  called  upon  a  friend,  the  Rev. 
Edward  Dollaway,  a  learned  antiquary,  begging 
him  to  assist  the  young  poet  with  his  erudition. 
The  antiquary  on  this  wrote  Shelley  a  long 
letter,  enclosing  him  a  collection  of  maps,  notes, 
and  documents  ;  but  the  poem  was  never  finished. 
A  thunderbolt  put  a  sudden  end  to  Shelley's  life 
at  Oxford,  and  crushed  all  the  hopes  and  plans 
of  his  father. 

On  matriculating  at  Oxford,  Shelley  had 
undertaken  to  respect  the  University  Religious 
Tests,  had  subscribed  to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles, 
and,  as  Mr.  Jeaffreson  says,  was  bound  to  prove 
himself  in  communion  with  the  Church  of 
England,  by  receiving  the  Sacrament  of  the  Lord's 
Supper  on  certain  days  in  his  college  chapel. 

It  is  interesting  to  learn  what  was  the  religious 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  85 

system    at    Oxford   in    18 10.     Mr.    Jcaffreson    is 
sufficiently  explicit  on  this  point  : 

In  respect  to  this  last  particular,  it  was  usual  for  the 
academic  "dons"  to  have  regard  for  the  religious  scruples 
of  the  undergraduates,  whose  consciousness  of  evil  living 
made  them  leel  they  would  be  guilty  of  presumption  in 
coming  to  the  Lord's  table.  On  gomg  to  the  Dean  of 
his  College,  or  his  tutor,  and  making  confession  of  his 
unfitness  to  communicate,  the  undergraduate  of  light 
manners  and  tender  conscience  received  permission  to 
be  absent  from  the  approaching  celebration,  on  the  under- 
standing that  he  made  a  suitable  contribution  to  the  alms 
gathered  on  the  occasion  for  charitable  uses.  In  most 
colleges  it  was  understood  that  the  undergraduate  who  thus 
avoided  the  communion  should  give  a  guinea  to  the 
offertory  ;  a  requirement  to  which  the  applicant  for  dis- 
pensation could  not  object  on  conscientious  grounds.  Hence 
the  usage  which  in  course  of  time  gave  occasion  for  the 
statement  that  the  dispensation  was  boH<^hl  for  a  guinea, 
and  the  still  more  perverse  statement  that  undergraduates 
took  the  Sacrament  at  the  University,  in  order  to  eacape  the 
exaction  of  twenty-one  shillings. 

It  is  easy  to  guess  what  Shelley  must  have 
thought  of  such  a  performance.  He  could  pass 
judgment  on  it  without  having  read  Mary  Woll- 
stonccraft's  remarks  on  the  defective  discipline 
and  morality  of  our  national  seminaries,  in  her 
"Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Women"":  "What 
good  can  be  expected  from  the  youth  who  receives 
the  Sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  to  avoid 
forfeiting  a  guinea,  which  he  probably  afterwards 
spends  in  some  sensual  manner?" 

Shelley  accepted  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  he  had 
accepted  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  Irom  necessity; 
as  a  philosopher,  he  could  only  laugh  at  it. 

Openly  to  attack  these  puerile  institutions  would 
have  been  to  court  destruction  ;  his  aims  were 
more  Machiavellian.  As  he  wrote  to  Hogg:  "It 
is  now  that  1  stand  in  need  of  all  my  art  ;  I  am 
driven  to  have  recourse  to  cunning.'''  It  seemed 
to    him   that    the   only   road    to   success   in    his 


86     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

enterprise  against  religion  was  to  arouse  public 
opinion,  to  stir  and  fashion  it,  and  yet  not  to 
expose  himself  to  defeat  by  self-betrayal  before 
the  battle.  To  this  end  it  was  well  to  air  his 
opinions,  to  disseminate  them  among  the  literary 
and  intelligent,  and  to  dispel  torpor  by  direct 
appeals  to  controversy.  He  had  practised  this 
method,  learned  from  Dr.  Lind,  at  Eton,  by 
addressing  inquiries  on  scientific  subjects  to 
learned  men,  and  there  was  now  no  danger  of 
incurring  a  flogging  from  Dr.  Keate,  with  which 
one  of  his  Eton  correspondents  had  threatened 
him.  He  would  take  efficient  means  to  avoid 
detection  this  time.  He  experienced  a  secret 
pleasure  in  the  thought  that  the  mysterious  blows 
which  could  not  fail  to  hit  their  object, 
"I'lnfame,"  would  be  struck  from  the  very 
sanctuary  of  its  most  fervent  worshippers  ;  he 
desired  to  effect  on  a  smaller  scale  that  which 
Voltaire  had,  with  greater  advantages  and  less 
ingenuity,  effected  on  a  larger,  and  in  a  country 
far  readier  than  England,  the  stronghold  of  cant, 
to  accept  .even  from  an  anonymous  hand  the 
daring  doctrines  of  free  thought,  and  the  revolu- 
tionary teachings  of  philosophy. 

He  entered,  therefore,  on  the  warfare,  writing 
under  various  pseudonyms,  even  feminine  names, 
to  prelates,  clergymen,  and  theologians,  who  took 
their  correspondent  for  an  unbeliever,  or  at 
least  a  sceptic.  Medwin,  who  passed  through 
Oxford  just  then,  found  Shelley  absorbed  and 
delighted  by  the  incidents  of  these  theological 
mystifications. 

But  personal  correspondence  was  found  to 
be  too  restricted.  Unless  his  arguments  were 
to  be  allowed  to  degenerate  into  barren  dis- 
cussions, a  starting-point  and  programme  setting 
forth  the  grounds  of  the  whole  question  became 
a  necessity.     Shelley,  therefore,  collaborated  with 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  87 

Hogg-,  and  brought  out  his  pamphlet  "  On  the 
Necessity  of  Atheism/' 

This  thesis,  written  in  the  form  of  a  geo- 
metrical theorem  with  the  traditional  O.É.D., 
Avas  the  outcome  of  the  meditations  of  the  two 
friends,  and  an  abridgment  of  their  analysis 
in  common  of  Hume's  "  Essays."  It  was  a  cate- 
gorical demonstration  that  the  existence  of  God 
could  not  be  proved  by  any  of  the  stock 
arguments  in  its  favour,  whether  drawn  from 
the  senses,   from   reason,  or  from  evidence. 

The  didactic  tone  of  the  work  leaves  no  room 
for  doubt  as  to  Shelley's  serious  purpose  in  writing 
it.  Hogg  speaks  of  it  more  lightly  as  "  an 
innocent  and  insignificant  thesis  proposed  for 
the  delectation  of  lovers  of  logomachy."  But 
for  Shelley  it  was  a  heavy  piece  of  ordnance 
intended  to  cause  much  noise  and  destruction. 
He  had  written  it  with  intense  conviction  and 
fervour.  *'  I  will  crush  Intolerance,"  he  wrote 
to  Hogg.  "I  will  at  least  attempt  it.  To  fail 
€ven  in  so  useful  an  attempt  were  glorious." 

So  soon  as  the  work  was  in  print*  he  hastened 
to  send  copies,  under  the  name  of  Jeremiah 
Stukeley,  to  all  those  whom  he  wished  to  draw 
into  correspondence  on  the  subject,  explaining 
that  "he  had  met  accidentally  with  this  little 
tract,  which  appeared,  unhappily,  to  be  quite 
unanswerable." 

"Unless  the  fish,"  writes  Hogg,  "was  too 
sluggish  to  take  the  bait,  an  answer  of  refutation 
was  forwarded  to  an  appointed  address  in  London, 
and  then  in  a  vigorous  reply  he  would  fall  upon 
the  unwary  disputant  and  break  his  bones.  ,  The 
strenuous  attack  sometimes  provoked  a  rejoinder 
more  carefully  prepared,  and  an  animated  and 
protracted  debate  ensued." 

*  E.  &  W.  Philipps,  printers,  Worthing,  Sussex. 


88      SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

This  did  not  last  long,  however.  The  pam- 
phlet had  been  advertised  in  the  Oxford  Herald 
on  February  9,  181 1,  and  had  caused  consternation 
in  the  enemy's  camp.  Doctors  of  Divinity  and 
Masters  of  Arts  took  counsel  together  to  stop 
the  infamous  tract  so  soon  as  it  should  be  on 
sale.  Without  Munday  &  Slatter's  knowledge 
Shelley  strewed  their  shop-windows  and  counter 
with  copies  of  his  pamphlet,  telling  their  shop- 
man to  sell  them  as  quickly  as  possible  at 
sixpence  apiece.*  One  of  the  Fellows  of  New 
College,  the  Rev.  John  Walker,  was  struck  by 
the  strange  title.  He  entered  the  shop,  looked 
into  the  pamphlet,  and  asked  to  see  one  of  the 
principals.  What  was  this  poison  they  were 
vending  ?  If  they  had  any  sense  of  propriety 
or  any  prudence,  they  would  instantly  destroy 
all  the  copies  on   which  they  could  lay  hands. 

The  booksellers,  astonished  and  alarmed, 
hastened  to  follow  this  charitable  advice,  and  at 
the  blazing  kitchen-fire,  in  presence  of  the  Grand 
Inquisitor,  John  Walker,  the  auto-da-fe  took 
place.  At  the  same  time  they  sent  to  Shelley, 
begging  him  to  come  and  confer  with  them, 
Shelley  arrived  without  delay,  and  an  animated 
conversation  ensued.  On  the  one  side,  Mr. 
Munday,  Mr.  Slatter,  and  a  certain  lawyer 
named  Clifford  who  happened  to  be  present, 
representing  to  Shelley  the  error  of  his  ways, 
pleading,  imploring,  threatening  ;  on  the  other 
side  the  youthful  author  fearlessly  defending 
his  cause  in  a  shrill  and  piercing  voice,  main- 
taining his  right  to  free  thought  and  free  speech, 
and  remaining  to  the  last  unconvinced  and 
unpersuadable. 

"  He  had  done  worse,"  he  told  them,  "  than 
spread    his   net   in    the   sight    of    callow    Oxford 

*  We  borrow  the  above  particulars  from  Mr.  Dowden's. 
'  Life  of  Shelley." 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  89 

birds — worse  than  shock  the  susceptibilities  of  a 
Fellow  oi  New  College  ;  he  had  sent  a  copy 
of  his  pamphlet  to  every  bishop  on  the  bench, 
to  the  Vice-Chancellor,  to  each  of  the  heads  of 
houses,  and  with  it  a  letter  in  his  own  hand- 
writing." 

This  open  admission  delivered  him  up  to  the 
enemy.  It  was  an  easy  matter  for  the  Oxford 
authorities  to  recognise  Shelley's  handwriting 
in  that  of  Jeremiah  Stukeley  ;  the  Dons  consulted 
together,  and  resolved  on  his  expulsion.  On 
March  25th,  a  fine  spring  morning,  Shelley  was 
sent  for  to  the  Common  Room,  where  he  found 
the  Master  and  some  of  the  Fellows.  Immedi- 
ately on  his  entrance,  a  copy  of  the  terrible 
syllabus  was  placed  before  him.  A  {^.w  minutes 
afterwards  he  rushed  into  his  rooms,  where  Hogg 
was  waiting  for  him,  in  extreme  agitation  :  "  I  am 
expelled  !  "  he  exclaimed  in  a  piercing  voice,  "  I 
am  expelled  !  ^•'  Then  he  gave  the  following 
account  to  Hogg  : 

"  I  was  sent  for  suddenly  a  few  minutes  ago.  I  went  to 
our  Common  Room,  wliere  I  found  our  Master  and  two  or 
three  of  the  Fellows.  The  Master  produced  a  copy  of  the 
little  syllabus,  and  asked  me  if  I  were  the  author  of  it.  He 
spoke  in  a  rude,  abrupt,  and  insolent  tone.  1  begged  to  be 
informed  for  what  purpose  he  put  the  question.  No  answer 
was  given  ;  but  the  Âlaster  loudly  and  angrily  repeated  : 
'  Are  you  the  author  of  this  book  ?'  *  If  I  can  judge  from 
your  manner,'  I  said,  'you  are  resolved  to  punish  me  if  1 
should  acknowledge  that  it  is  my  work.  If  you  can  prove 
that  it  is,  produce  your  evidence  ;  it  is  neither  just  nor 
lawful  to  interrogate  me  in  such  a  case  and  for  such  a 
purpose.  Such  proceedings  would  become  a  court  of  in- 
quisitors, but  not  free  men  in  a  free  country.'  '  Do  you 
choose  to  deny  that  this  is  your  composition.'"  the  Master 
reiterated  in  the  same  rude  and  angry  voice."  Shelley  com- 
plained much  of  hi'j  violent  and  ungentleman  like  deport- 
ment, saying:  "I  h  ive  experienced  tyranny  and  injustice 
before,  and  I  well  know  what  vulgar  violence  is  ;  but  I 
]iever  met  with  such  unworthy  treatment.  I  told  him  calmly 
but  firmly  that  I  was  determined  not  to  answer  any  ques- 


90     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

tions  respecting  the  publication.  He  immediately  re- 
peated his  demand.  I  persisted  in  my  refusal,  and  he  said 
furiously  :  '  Then  you  are  expelled,  and  I  desire  you  will 
quit  the  Colie'jje  early  to-morrow  mornin^  at  the  latest.' 
One  of  the  Fellows  took  up  two  papers  and  handed  one  of 
them  to  me  ;  here  it  is."  He  produced  a  reguLtr  sentence 
of  expulsion,  drawn  up  in  due  form,  under  the  seal  of 
the  College. 

Hogg  instantly  addressed  a  note,  which  Mr. 
Jeaffreson  calls  impudent,  but  which  we  should 
rather  characterise  as  courageous,  to  the  Master 
and  Fellows,  in  which  he  begged  them  to  recon- 
sider their  decision  with  regard  to  Shelley. 

I  wrote  a  short  note  to  the  Master  and  Fellows,  in  which  I  • 
briefly  expressed  my  sorrow  at  the  treatment  my  friend  had 
experienced,  and  my  hope  that  they  would  reconsider  their 
sentence.  The  note  was  despatched  ;  the  conclave  was 
still  sittin^j  ;  and  in  an  instant  the  porter  came  to  summon 
me  to  attend,  bearing  in  his  countenance  a  promise  of  the 
reception  which  I  was  about  to  find. 

Hogg  followed  Shelley's  example  ;  he  refused 
to  answer  the  questions  of  the  Master,  and  in- 
stantly received  a  sentence  of  expulsion. 

On  the  morning  of  March  26th,  181 1,  Percy 
Bysshe  Shelley  and  Thomas  Jefferson  Hogg  left 
Oxford  for  London. 

It  is  in  vain  for  Oxford  to  try  and  cleanse 
herself  from  the  stain  she  incurred  in  expelling 
Shelley  ;  vain  are  her  present  efforts  to  appeal 
from  the  verdict  of  public  opinion,  and  Mr. 
Jeaffreson's  dull  pleadings  serve  only  to  deepen 
the  stigma  that  rests  upon  the  venerable 
University. 

Mr.  Rossetti  is  the  mouthpiece  of  all  that  is 
intellectual  and  liberal  in  England  when  he 
writes  : 

In  this  case  as  in  others,  the  honestest  and  boldest 
course  is  also  the  safest  ;  and  we  shall  do  well  to  under- 


SHELLEY  AT  OXFORD.  91 

stand  once  for  all  that  Percy  Shelley  had  as  good  a  rijj^ht  to 
form  and  expound  his  opinions  on  theology,  as  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  had  to  his. 

It  is  easy  to  perceive,  as  Mr.  Jeaffreson  says,  that 
Mr.  Rossetti  is  not  an  Oxford  man  ! 


CHAPTER  VI. 

SHELLEY  IN  LONDON,  AT  FIELD  PLACE,  AND  AT 
CWM  ELAN  —  ELOPEMENT  WITH  HARRIET 
WESTBROOK— 1811. 

The  two  exiles  reached  London  at  dusk,  and  the 
next  morning  they  settled  in  lodgings  at  No.  15, 
Poland  Street.  "The  name  attracted  Shelley; 
it  reminded  him  of  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw  and  of 
freedom. ^^  The  furnished  lodging-house  appears 
to  him  like  an  enchanted  palace;  he  was  "fas- 
cinated by  a  gaudy  wall-paper  of  vine-trellises  and 
grapes  which  adorned  the  parlour  ;  and  vowed 
he  would  stay  there  for  ever."  Every  new  im- 
pression was  with  him  so  vivid,  that  he  imagined 
it  must  endure  "  for  ever."  Less  than  a  month 
had  elapsed,  and  Hogg  having  left  him,  the  en- 
chantment vanished,  and  he  abode  "  alone  in  the 
vine-trellised  chamber,  where  he  was  to  remain  a 
bright-eyed,  restless  fox  amidst  sour  grapes." 

Mr.  Shelley  was  horrified  at  his  son's  expul- 
sion, and  his  first  thought  was  to  endeavour  to 
separate  him  from  his  evil  genius.  To  this  end 
he  had  corresponded  with  Hogg's  father,  request- 
ing him  to  come  and  lecture  "  his  young  man  ;  " 
he  had  next  written  from  an  hotel  to  his  son, 
stating  as  the  conditions  of  forgiveness  that 
Shelley  must  immediately  return  to  Field  Place^ 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  93 

must  cease  all  intercourse  with  Mr.  Hogg",  and 
continue  his  studies  privately  under  a  master 
he  would  himself  select.  He  reserved  to  himself 
the  task  of  converting  the  young  unbeliever  by 
means  of  Paley's  "  Natural  Theology."  "  I  shall 
read  it  with  him,"  he  writes  in  melancholy  mood 
to  Hogg  senior;  "a  father  in  such  case  will  have 
more  influence  than  a  stranger."  Meanwhile  he 
invited  the  two  rebels  to  dine  with  him  at  his 
hotel.  On  the  7th  April,  181 1,  Hogg  and  Shelley, 
before  presenting  themselves  at  dinner  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  invitation,  took  a  long  ramble 
together,  during  which  Shelley  read  aloud  some 
passages  from  a  book  criticising  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  ridiculing  the  Jews  and  their  religion. 
Mr.  Shelley  received  his  guests  with  friendly 
courtesy  ;  but  presently  began  to  bluster,  not 
unkindly,  and  to  grumble,  swear,  laugh,  and  cry 
all  at  once. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  my  father  ?  "  asked 
Shelley,  aside,  of  his  friend. 

"  That  is  not  your  father,^'  replied  Hogg;  "he 
is  the  God  of  the  Jews,  the  Jehovah  you  were 
reading  about." 

Shelley  was  so  tickled  by  the  reply  that, 
bursting  into  irrepressible  laughter,  he  slipped 
from  his  chair  and  lay  stretched  on  the  floor, 
to  the  entire  stupefaction  of  his  father,  and  of 
Graham,  who  was  present.  At  this  moment 
dinner  was  announced.  Mr.  Graham,  pulled 
Shelley  to  his  feet,  and  they  dined  amicably. 
After  dinner  Shelley's  father  took  Hogg  aside 
and  held  a  serious  conversation  witii  him,  in 
the  course  of  which  Hogg  advised  him  philosophi- 
cally to  get  his  son  married  as  soon  as  possible. 
After  tea,  religion  was  introduced. 

"  There  is  certainly  a  God,"  said  the  Squire 
of  Field  Place;  "there  is  no  doubt  as  to  the 
existence  of  the  Deity."    Then,  as  no  one  disputed 


94     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

the  proposition,  the  Squire,  turning  suddenly  on 
Hog-g,  said  :  "  Have  you^  sir,  any  doubt  on  the 
subject  ?  " 

''None." 

"  If  you  had,  I  could  prove  it  to  you  in  a 
minute." 

"  I  have  no  doubt." 

"  But  perhaps  you  would  like  to  hear  my 
argument }  " 

"  Very  much." 

"  I  will  read  it  to  you,  then,"  cried  the  Squire^ 
drawing  from  his  pocket  a  sheet  of  letter-paper 
whereon  he  had  jotted  down  a  few  arguments- 
taken  from  Paley's  "  Natural  Theology." 

"  I  have  heard  this  argument  before,"  said 
Shelley  in  a  low  voice  to  Hogg. 

"They  are  Paley's  arguments,"  said  Hogg. 

"  Yes,  you  are  right,  sir,"  said  the  Squire, 
returning  the  paper  to  his  pocket.  "  They  are 
Palleys  arguments,  I  copied  them  out  of  Palley's 
book  this  morning  myself;  but  Palley  had  them 
originally  from  me  ;  almost  everything  in  Palley's 
book  he  had  from  me." 

The  prospect  of  studying  Paley  with  the 
Squire  as  his  Egeria  was  not  calculated  to  fasci- 
nate Shelley.  He  replied  to  proposals  from  his 
father  that  he  had  resolved  to  remain  in  Poland 
Street,  and  that  nothing  in  the  world  would  induce 
him  to  give  up  Hogg.  Thereupon  the  Squire  drew 
his  purse-strings  tight  and  forbade  him  his  house. 

Amid  all  these  conflicts  and  perplexities 
Shelley  was  not  losing  his  time.  While  con- 
tinuing his  studies  and  discussions  with  Hogg, 
he  was  familiarising  himself  with  the  immense 
city,  which  his  imagination  represented  to  him 
in  ages  to  come  as  a  "  habitation  of  bitterns, 
shapeless    and   nameless   ruins."*      In   company 

*  Dedication  of  "  Peter  Bell  the  Third." 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  95 

with  Hogg,  with  his  cousin  Charles  Grove,  or  with 
Medwin,  he  wandered  through  the  streets  and 
parks  of  London  ;  through  Kensington  Gardens, 
the  secluded  parts  of  which — and  especially  one 
dark  nook -planted  with  old  yew-trees — delighted 
him  ;  through  St.  James's  Park,  where  the  sight 
of  military  evolutions  elicited  angry  outbursts 
against  standing  armies  and  their  danger  to 
liberty  ;  and  by  the  green  banks  of  the  Serpentine, 
where  he  delighted  in  sailing  flotillas  of  paper 
boats.  On  one  occasion,  about  this  time,  he 
might  have  been  found  declaiming  at  the  British 
Forum,*  a  Radical  club  ;  on  another,  after  hearing 
the  great  preacher,  Rowland  Hill,  at  Surrey 
Chapel,  and  comparing  his  dramatic  talent  to 
that  of  Kean  or  Kemble,  he  addressed  a  letter 
to  him  proposing  to  occupy  his  pulpit  and  address 
his  congregation.  He  also  regularly  attended, 
with  his  cousin,  the  great  Abernethy's  anatomical 
lectures  at  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital. 

At  this  period  he  even  thought  of  entering 
the  medical  profession.  These  various  projects 
hardly  accorded  with  the  views  of  Mr.  Shelley, 
and  his  patron  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  who 
wished  him  to  enter  Parliament.  If  he  felt  any 
enthusiasm  for  politics,  it  was  quite  in  an  opposite 
direction  to  the  aristocratic  Liberalism  of  moderate 
Whigs  like  his  father.  The  miserable  state  of 
England  at  that  time  was  not  likely  to  reconcile 
him  to  Royalty,  whose  luxury  and  indifference, 
when  contrasted  with  the  severe  sufferings  of 
the  people,  presented  a  spectacle  alike  painful 
and  grotesque.  Shelley  was  moved  by  it  to 
alternate  tears  and  laughter.     On  June  19th,  181 1, 

*  "  He  made  so  good  a  speech,"  says  Grove,  "  that 
when  he  left  the  room,  there  was  a  rush  to  find  out  who  he 
was,  and  to  induce  him  to  attend  there  again."  Shelley- 
evaded  their  enthusiasm  by  giving  them  a  false  name  and 
address. 


ç6     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

a  grand  ball  was  given  at  Carlton  House  by  the 
Prince  Regent,  afterwards  George  IV.,  in  honour 
of  the  Bourbon  émigrés.  They  were  received  by 
the  Prince  sitting  under  a  crimson  canopy  of  state, 
and  passed  from  the  Privy  Council  Chamber  to 
the  sky-blue  satin  room,  decorated  for  the  occa- 
sion with  fieurs-de-lys.  In  the  banqueting  hall 
the  great  table  extended  to  the  length  of  two 
hundred  feet,  and  through  a  groove  in  the  table 
ran  a  stream  of  pure  water  flowing  from  a  silver 
fountain,  the  banks  of  which  were  covered  with 
green  moss  and  aquatic  flowers.  Gold  and  silver 
fishes  swam  in  mid-stream.  At  the  end  of  the  table, 
above  the  fountain,  sat,  on  a  throne  of  crimson 
velvet,  the  Prince  Regent  in  a  field-marshal's 
uniform,  wearing  a  wig  with  a  long  queue,  a  large 
diamond  ornament  in  his  hat,  a  jewelled  sword  by 
his  side.  The  grace  and  elegance  of  his  manners 
were  in  perfect  harmony  with  this  theatrical 
costume.  The  sole  question  which  occupied  the 
minds  of  the  company  was  whether  the  Countess 
of  Clonmel  or  Mrs.  Thomas  Hope  bore  away 
the  palm  for  splendour  of  attire. 

We  may  imagine  the  exhilarating  effect  on 
Shelley  when  he  read  the  account  of  such  extrava- 
gant folly  in  the  Morning  Herald.  He  remem- 
bered it  more  than  once  afterwards  when  writing 
"  Queen  Mab,"  and  "  Swellfoot  the  Tyrant,''  de- 
scribing the  luxury  and  magnificence  of  the  Royal 
table  :  "  The  price  and  pains  which  its  ingredients 
cost  might  have  maintained  some  dozen  families 
a  winter  or  two."  * 

His  sense  of  humour  was  keenly  touched  by 
this  Royal  farce;  and  he  purposed  celebrating 
it  in  lyrical  form.  He  wrote  to  his  friend  Graham, 
the  musician,  asking  his  co-operation  : 

"If,  Graham,  within  that  democratical  bosom  of  thine 
yet  lingers  a  spark  of  loyalty,  if  a  true  and  firm  King's  man 

*  "  Swellfoot  the  Tyrant,"  Scene  2. 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  97 

ever  found  favour  in  thy  sight,  if  thou  art  not  totally 
hardened  to  streamlets  whose  mossy  banks  invite  the  repose 
of  the  wanderer — if,  I  repeat,  yet  thou  lovest  thy  rulers,  and 
kissest  the  honeyed  rod — then,  Graham,  do  1  conjure  thee  by 
the  great  George,  our  King,  by  our  noble  Prince  Regent, 
and  our  inimitable  Commander-in-Chief — then  do  I  conjure 
thee  by  Mr.  Clarke,  the  Duke  of  Kent,  and  Lord  Castlereagh, 
together  with  Lord  Grenville,  that  thou  wilt  assist  me  (as 
heretofore  thou  didst  promise)  in  my  loyal  endeavour  to 
magnify,  if  magnification  be  possible,  our  noble  Royal 
Family.  .  .  .  Thou  hast  a  harp  of  fire,  and  I  a  pen  of  honey, 
Let  then  the  song  roll — well,  let  it  roll  !  Take  thou  thy 
tuning-fork,  for  the  ode  is  coming." 

The  letter  closes  with  a  translation   of  the  first   verse 
of  the  "  Marseillaise." 


The  ode  came,  and  was  immediately  printed. 
Only  a  few  insignificant  lines  are  now  in  existence, 
Shelley  amused  himself  by  flinging  copies  into 
the  carriages  of  persons  who  called  at  Carlton 
House. 

On  April  iSth,  Hogg  had  regretfully  left  his 
friend,  and  started  for  York,  where  he  wa.s  to 
study  the  legal  profession.  Shelley  missed  him 
sorely,  and  his  first  letters  are  full  of  grief  and 
despair.  Relations  with  his  father  were  still  much 
strained.  When  by  chance  Mr.  Shelley  happened 
to  meet  his  son,  he  acknowledged  his  salutation 
by  a  look  "  dark  as  a  thunder-cloud,"  and  a 
majestic  "Your  most  humble  servant.'"  "  Father," 
writes  Shelley,  on  April  29th,  "is  as  fierce  as  a  lion 
again.  .  .  .  He  wants  me  to  go  to  Oxford  to 
apologise  to  the  Master,  etc.  No,  of  course.  .  .  . 
I  don't  know  where  I  am,  where  I  will  be.  P^iture,. 
present,  past,  is  all  a  mist  ;  it  seems  as  if  I  had 
begun  existence  anew  under  auspices  so  unfavour- 
able.    Yet  no,  that  is  stupid. '^ 

So  long  as  his  father  did  not  relent  towards 
him,  Shelley  subsisted  in  London  by  the  help 
of  money  from  Hogg,  on  the  sums  sent  him 
m  secret  by  his  sisters  (he  had  proudly  refused 
all  help  from  his  mother),  or  on  that  given  him 

H 


98     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

by  his  uncle,  Captain  Pilfold,  a  brave  and 
jovial  sailor,  who  considered  it  more  creditable 
to  be  expelled  from  Oxford  than  to  have  ^ained 
the  Nevvdis^ate.  By  way  of  return,  Shelley 
"illuminated"  him.  The  good  uncle,  with  the 
help  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  contrived  to  appease 
the  wrath  of  the  "lion''  of  Field  Place;  Mr. 
Shelley  allowed  himself  at  last  to  be  persuaded, 
and  agreed  to  receive  his  son  at  home  once 
more.  Next  he  made  him  aq  allowance  of 
;^20o  a  year,  with  permission  to  live  where- 
soever he  preferred,  on  condition,  however,  of 
keeping  apart  from  Hogg. 

Two  hundred  a  year!  It  was  more  than 
Shelley  hoped  or  wished  for.  "What  is  money 
to  me }  "  he  writes  to  Hogg,  "  What  does  it 
matter  if  I  cannot  even  purchase  sufficient 
gejiteel  clothes  ?  I  still  have  a  shabby  great- 
coat, and  those  whose  good  opinion  constitutes 
my  happiness  would  not  regard  me  the  better 
or  the  worse  for  this  or  any  other  consequence 
of  poverty.  Fifty  pounds  per  annum  would  be 
quite  enough." 

During  the  few  weeks  of  his  sojourn  at  Field 
Place  in  May  and  June,  Shelley  sorrowfully 
discovered  a  complete  change  of  feeling  in  his 
sister  Elizabeth.  She  had  been  serious,  con- 
templative, affectionate,  enthusiastic,  despising  the 
world,  but  she  was  now  apathetic  to  everything 
except  the  trivial  amusements  and  despicable 
intercourse  of  restrained  conversation,  "  bowing 
before  that  hellish  idol,  the  world;  appealing 
to  its  unjust  decisions  in  cases  which  demand 
a  trial  at  the  higher  tribunal  of  conscience.  Yet 
I  do  not  despair  ;  what  she  07ice  was  she  has 
a  power  to  be  again,  but  will  that  power  ever 
be  exerted  ?  "  She  looked  upon  her  brother 
and  his  friend  as  mad.  Matrimony  had  become 
"  the  subject  of  her  constant  and  pointed  pane- 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  99 

^yric.  It  was  monstrous  !  "  Hog^  felt  incredu- 
lous ;  it  seemed  blasphemous  to  doubt  Elizabeth's 
divine  excellence,  "  Why,  then,"  wrote  Shelley, 
"not  come  and  judge  for  yourself?  Come 
incopiito,  my  dear  friend.  I  have  two  rooms 
in  this  house  exclusively  my  own  ;  you  shall 
share  them  with  me,  you  will  be  like  a  State 
prisoner.  You  must  only  walk  with  me  at  mid- 
night for  fear  of  discovery.  My  window  com- 
mands a  view  of  the  lawn,  where  you  will 
frequently  see  an  object  that  will  repay  your 
journey — the  object  of  my  fond  affections.  I 
will  meet  you  at  midnight  at  the  Horsham  coach  ; 
and  will  return  with  you  to  York." 

The  project  of  a  clandestine  journey  did  not 
commend  itself  to  Hogg,  and  Shelley  found 
himself  reduced  to  solitude.  "  I  am  a  perfect 
hermit,  not  a  being  to  speak  with!  I  sometimes 
exchange  a  word  with  my  mother  on  the  subject 
of  the  weather,  upon  which  she  is  irresistibly 
eloquent;  otherwise  all  is  deep  silence!"  The 
silent  gloom  of  a  home  that  in  earlier  days  had 
echoed  to  the  joyful  games  of  his  childhood 
filled  Shelley  with  dark  anticipations.  "Why 
should  we  linger  on  the  earth  ?  My  dearest 
hopes  are  fled.  .  .  .  She  whom  I  had  hoped 
to  unite  to  Hogg  is  unworthy  of  him.  ...  I 
have  been  thinking  of  Death  and  Heaven  for 
four  days.  Where  is  the  latter?  Is  there  a 
future  life?  Whom  should  we  injure  by  de- 
parting? Should  we  not  benefit  some?  I  was 
thinking  last  night,  when  from  the  summer- 
house  1  saw  the  moon  just  behind  one  of  the 
chimne\s,  if  she  alone  were  to  witness  our 
departure  ?" 

Elizabeth's  desertion  was  one  of  the  deep 
sorrows  of  Shelley's  life,  and  at  the  same  time 
increased  his  horror  of  bigotry  and  intolerance. 

There  could  be  but  one  consolation,  another 

H  2 


loo    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

female  heart  to  take  the  place  of  the  lost  sister  ; 
and  this  he  found,  while  on  a  visit  to  his  uncle 
Pilfold  at  Cuckfield,  in  the  person  of  the  poor 
schoolmistress  of  the  neighbouring  village  of 
Hurstpierpoint.  One  of  the  Captain's  daughters 
was  among  her  pupils.  Miss  Elizabeth  Kitchener 
thenceforth  became  Shelley's  ideal  of  the  valiant 
woman,  the  feminine  apostle  whom  he  afterwards 
celebrated  as  Cythna  in  the  "Revolt  of  Islam." 
At  a  somewhat  later  period,  but  while  still 
in  a  state  of  enthusiastic  admiration  for  his  chance 
acquaintance,  he  writes  :  * 

She  is  a  woman  with  whom  I  have  become  intimate 
on  account  of  her  excellent  qualities.  Though  derivinp-  her 
birth  from  a  very  humble  source,  she  contracted  during 
youth  a  very  deep  and  refined  habit  of  thinking  ;  her  mind, 
naturally  inquisitive  and  penetrating,  overstepped  the  bounds 
of  prejudice  ;  she  formed  for  herself  an  unbeaten  path  of 
life.  Under  the  patronage  of  a  singularly  liberal  mind,  this 
woman,  when  twenty  years  of  age,  became  mistress  of  a 
school.  She  concealed  not  the  uncommon  modes  of  think- 
ing which  she  had  adopted,  and  publicly  instructed  youth  as 
a  Deist  and  a  Republican.  When  I  first  knew  her,  she  had 
not  read  "  Political  Justice,"  yet  her  life  appeared  to  me  in 
a  great  degree  modelled  upon  its  precepts.  Such  is  the 
woman  who  will  shortly  become  a  member  of  our  family. 

From  the  first  day  of  their  acquaintance,  in 
fact,  Shelley  had  but  one  thought  :  to  withdraw 
Miss  Kitchener  from  her  humble  avocations, 
and  attach  her  to  himself  as  a  soul  necessary  to 
his  soul.  Thenceforth  he  would  confide  all  his 
thoughts  to  her  keeping,  and  would  disclose  the 
inmost  sanctuary  of  his  being.  On  his  departure 
from  Cuckfield  he  left  with  his  uncle  various 
books  for  her  use  :  a  copy  of  Southey's  "  Curse 
of  Kehama,"  Ensor's  ''National  Education,"  and 
Locke's  ''  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding." 
On  his  return  to  Field  Place,  he  at  once  entered 

*  Letter  to  Godwin,  July,  1812. 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  loi 

into  a  polemical  correspondence  with  his  ncvvly- 
niade  friend,  embracing  all  the  great  metaphysical, 
religious,  and  moral  problems  in  which  he  was 
absorbed. =i= 

Shelley  also  engaged  in  another  correspon- 
dence while  at  Field  Place  with  the  two  Miss 
Westbrooks,  one  of  whom,  the  younger  by  four- 
teen years,  was  destined  shortly  afterwards  to 
become  his  wife. 

We  must  retrace  our  steps  to  make  acquaint- 
ance with  the  Westbrooks.  "  Jew  "  Westbrook,  as 
he  was  called,  was  a  rich  tavern-keeper  in  Mount 
Street,  and  besides  selling  food  and  drink  at  the 
bar,  he  lent  money  in  his  back-parlour  to  customers  ; 
and  with  the  help  of  his  wife,  formerly  a  cook, 
he  had  made  a  large  fortune  by  the  two  trades. 
So  soon  as  his  means  permitted,  he  had  removed 
his  family  to  a  private  house  in  Chapel  Street, 
and  had  provided  his  daughters  with  the  edu- 
cation of  young  ladies.  Thus  the  younger  of  the 
two  was  at  Mrs.  Fenning's  school  at  Clapham 
at  the  same  time  as  Mary  and  Helen  Shelley. 
During  the  Oxford  vacation  Shelley's  sisters  had 
spoken  with  enthusiasm  of  their  school-fellow, 
Harriet  Westbrook  ;  they  admired  her  beauty 
and  loved  her  for  her  gay  and  gentle  dis- 
position. She  was  in  truth  a  charming  child, 
whose  faults  of  impatience  or  temper  were 
forgotten  in  her  bright  smile.  She  v/as  the 
favourite  pupil,  a  capricious  and  lovely  doll. 
Helen  Shelley,  who  saw  her  for  the  last  time 
in  i8ii,has  traced  her  portrait  in  these  words: 

She  was  a  very  handsome  girl,  with  a  complexion  quite 
unknovvn  in  these  days— brilliant  in  pink  and  white— with 
iiair  quite  like  a  poet's  dream,  and  Bysshe's  peculiar  admu-a- 

*  About  fifty  of  these  letters  are  in  existence.  Thev  are 
of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  history  of  Shelley's  mind 
during  1811-1812. 


I02     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

tion.  Mrs.  Fenning  and  the  under -mistresses  used  to 
remark  upon  her  beauty,  and  often  said  she  might  enact 
Venus  in  a.féfe  champêtre.  Her  eyes,  like  Shelley's,  were 
blue  and  prominent,  and  her  hair  light  brown. 

She  acquired  a  still  deeper  interest  in  Shelley's 
eyes  from  a  hidden  melancholy  of  temperament 
— often  speaking  of  suicide,  but  so  calmly  that 
her  hearers  had  ceased  to  be  alarmed  by  her 
words.  This  depression  of  spirits,  forming  so 
strong  a  contrast  to  the  bright  and  playful 
disposition  of  the  fair  Venus,  was  attributed  to 
the  sorrows  caused  by  her  father's  tyrann}'. 
Trèlawney  relates  that  on  one  of  Shellej^'s  visits 
to  Clapham,  he  found  the  young  girls  discussing 
Harriet's  trials  with  her  father,  and  that  having 
himself  suffered  deeply  from  paternal  tyranny, 
he  conceived  a  generous  passion  for  the  interesting 
victim  ;  and  his  sisters  seeing  no  means  of 
rescuing  her,  Shelley  exclaimed  on  a  sudden  : 
"  Well,  then,  I  will  marry  her  !  ''  He  considered 
his  imprudent  exclamation  as  binding,  and  kept 
his  word. 

Shelley's  first  acquaintance  with  Harriet 
dated  from  January,  i8ii.  At  the  end  of  the 
Christmas  holidays,  his  sister  Mary  had  given 
him  a  letter  of  introduction  to  the  Westbrooks, 
and  a  present  for  her  friend,  of  which  he  was 
to  be  the  bearer.  In  the  course  of  the  month, 
Shelley,  on  returning  to  Oxford,  had  forwarded 
to  Harriet  a  copy  of  his  novel  of  "  St.  Irvyne," 
by  the  perusal  of  which  she  could  study  at  leisure 
the  doctrines  of  Free  Love,  and  imbibe  the 
delicious  poison  of  the  poetic  loves  of  Eloisa 
and  Fitzeustace.  It  was  probably  in  return  for 
this  attention,  that  she  subscribed  to  a  volume 
of  poems  by  Miss  Janetta  Philipps,*  a  young 
writer  warmly  patronised  by  the  poet. 

*  The  bonk  was  brought  out  in   1811,  under  the  title  of 
"Poems  by  Jauetta  Philipps,  O.\ford,"  and  was  preceded  by 


I 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  103 

A  close  correspondence  between  Harriet 
and  Shelley  ensued. 

Miss  Westbrook  completed  her  conquest  of 
the  poet  by  confiding  to  him  the  unreasonable 
and  tyrannical  treatment  she  received  from  her 
parents,  and  her  wretchedness  in  an  atmosphere 
where  there  were  none  whom  she  could  love  ; 
Shelley  endeavoured  to  console  her  by  raising 
her  tone  of  mind,  and  uprooting  all  her  supersti- 
tions. He  soon  conquered  her  first  scruples. 
Harriet  was  fascinated,  and  easily  forgot  the 
repugnance  she  had  at  first  felt  for  the  atheist, 
whose  fame  as  such  had  reached  even  the 
Clapham  school.  Shortly  after  her  marriage 
(March,  1812),  Harriet  gives  to  a  friend — Miss 
Hitchener — an  account  of  this  part  of  her  life, 
whose  tragic  ending  lends  a  touching  interest  to 
her  letter. 

Why  does  my  dear  friend  continually  mislead  herself, 
and  tlius  apply  to  my  judgment,  which  is  so  inferior  to 
her  own  ?  'Tis  true  you  have  mixed  more  in  the  world  than 
myself.  My  knowledge  has  been  very  confined  on  account 
of  my  youth,  and  the  situation  in  which  I  was  placed.  My 
intercourse  with  mankind  has,  therefore,  been  much  less 
than  you  may  imagine.  When  I  lived  with  my  father  I  was 
not  likely  to  gain  much  knowledge,  as  our  circle  ot  acquaint- 
ance was  very  limited,  he  not  thinking  it  proper  that  we 
should  mix  much  with  society.  In  short,  we  very  seldom 
visited  those  places  of  fashionable  resort  and  amusement 
which,  from  our  age,  might  have  been  expected.  'Twas  but 
seldom  1  visited  my  home,  school  having  witnessed  the 
greater  part  of  my  life.  But  do  not  think  from  this  that  I 
was  ignorant  of  what  was  passing  in  the  great  world  : 
books  and  a  newspaper  were  sufficient  to  inform  me  of 
these.  Though  then  a  silent  spectator,  yet  did  I  know  that 
all  was  not  as  it  ought  to  be.  I  looked  with  a  fearful  eye 
upon  the  vices  of  the  great,  and  thouglit  to  myself  'twas 
better  even  to  be  a  beggar,  or  to  be  obliged  to  gain  my 
bread  with  my  needle,  than  to  be  the  inhabitant  of  those 
great  houses,  when  misery  and  famine  howl  around. 

a  list  of  subscribers,  among  whom  the  names  of  Shelley  and 
Harriet  Westbrook  appear  lor  the  first  time  together. 


104.    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

I  will  tell  you  my  faults,  knowing  what  I  have  to  expect 
from  your  friendship.  Remember  my  youth,  and  if  any 
ex'cuse  can  be  made,  let  that  suffice.  In  London,  vou  know, 
there  are  military,  as  well  as  everywhere  else.  When  quite 
a  child  I  admired  these  red-coats.  This  grew  up  with  me, 
and  I  thought  the  military  the  best  as  well  as  most  fascina- 
ting men  in  the  world— though  at  the  same  time  I  used 
to  declare  never  to  marry  one.  This  was  not  so  much 
on  account  of  their  vices,  as  from  the  idea  of  their  being 
killed.  I  thought,  if  I  married  any  one,  it  should  be  a 
clergyman.  Strange  idea  this,  was  it  not  ?  But  being  brought 
up  in  the  Christian  religion,  'twas  this  first  gave  rise  to  it. 
You  may  conceive  with  what  horror  I  first  heard  that 
Percy  was  an  atheist  ;  at  least,  so  it  was  given  out  at  Clapham. 
At  first  I  did  not  comprehend  the  meaning  of  the  word  ; 
therefore  when  it  was  explained  I  was  truly  petrified.  I 
wondered  how  he  could  live  a  moment  professing  such 
principles,  and  solemnly  declared  that  he  should  never 
change  mine.  I  little  thought  of  the  rectitude  of  these 
principles,  and  when  I  wrote  to  him  I  used  to  try  to  shake 
them— making  sure  he  was  in  the  wrong,  and  that  myself 
w-as  right.  Yet  I  would  listen  to  none  of  his  arguments,  so 
afraid  I  was  that  he  should  shake  my  belief.  At  the  same 
time  I  believed  in  Eternal  Punishment,  and  was  dreadfully 
afraid  of  his  supreme  Majesty  the  Devil.  I  thought  I 
should  see  him  if  I  listened  to  his  arguments.  I  often 
dreamed  of  him,  and  felt  such  terror  when  I  heard  his 
name  mentioned.  These  were  the  effects  of  a  bad  education 
and  living  with  Methodists.  Now,  however,  this  is  entirely 
done  away  with,  and  my  soul  is  no  longer  shackled  with  such 
idle  fears. 

After  Shelley's  expulsion  from  Oxford,  one  of 
his  first  visits  in  London  had  been  to  Mrs. 
Fenning's  school,  and  Harriet  took  the  opportunity 
of  her  own  frequent  visits  to  her  parents  at  Chapel 
Street  to  convey  to  Bysshe  the  money  sent  him  by 
his  sisters.  He  improved  his  acquaintance  with 
the  Westbrooks,  and  particularly  with  Harriet's 
elder  sister  Eliza,  who  subsequently  acted  so  odious 
a  part  in  the  poet's  home.  Her  thoughts  were  now 
centred  on  becoming  the  sister-in-law  of  a  future 
baronet,  and  Shelley  suffered  himself  to  be 
bewitched  by  this  feminine  fiend. 

No  sooner  had  Hogg  left  London  than  Shelley 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  105 

received  a  visit  from  the  two  sisters  at  his  lod^^inf^s. 
In  his  letters  to  Hogg  he  dwells  complacently  on 
the  goodness  and  kindness  of  the  elder  Miss 
Westbrook,  and  on  the  progress  of  his  anti-religious 
instructions  to  the  two  girls.  "The  fiend,  the 
wretch  shall  fall  !  "  he  writes  on  the  28th  of  April. 
•' Harriet  will  do  for  one  of  the  crushers,  and  the 
eldest  (Eliza)  with  some  taming  will  do  too." 

He  took  frequent  walks  with  them  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  Clapham  "prison-house" 
wherein  poor  Harriet  was  pining  away.  Eliza 
artfully  contrived  as  many  interviews  as  possible; 
on  one  occasion  Shelley  hastened  to  Chapel  Street 
on  her  invitation,  where  he  found  the  poor  captive 
suffering  from  a  severe  headache.  Eliza  left  him 
in  her  sister's  sole  company  until  a  late  hour  of  the 
night. 

"  My  poor  little  friend  has  been  ill,"  he  writes  to  Hogg  ; 
"her  sister  sent  forme  the  other  night.  I  found  her  on  a 
couch,  pale  ;  her  father  is  civil  to  me,  very  strangely  ;  the 
sister  is  too  civil  by  half.  She  began  tali-cing  about  r Amour. 
I  philosophised,  and  the  youngest  said  she  had  such  a 
headache  that  she  could  not  bear  conversation.  Her  sister 
then  went  away,  and  I  stayed  till  half-past  twelve.  Her 
father  had  a  large  party  below,  he  invited  me  ;  I  refused. 
The  two  sisters  are  both  very  clever,  and  the  youngest  (my 
friend)  is  amiable.  Yesterday  she  was  better  ;  to-day  her 
father  compelled  her  to  return  to  Clapham,  whither  1  have 
conducted  her." 

On  their  way  thither,  Harriet  confided  to 
Shelley  the  persecution  she  had  to  endure  on  his 
account,  and  the  disdain  with  which  she  opposed  her 
schoolfellows'  cruelty.  It  is  intelligible  that  such 
a  confession  must  have  alike  inflamed  Shelley's 
hatred  of  intolerance,  and  his  love  for  the 
courageous  girl. 

Shelley's  lessons  were  so  fruitful,  that  the  girl- 
freethinker  soon  became  suspected  on  account  of 
her   advanced    ideas,   and   was   shunned    by    her 


io6    SHELLEY— THE  MAN' AND   THE  POET. 

schoolfellows,  who  called  her  an  "  abandoned 
wretch."  Helen  Shelley  alone  stood  by  her,  and 
such  courageousness  delighted  her  brother,  who 
writes  to  Hogg  :  *'  She  would  be  a  divine  little 
scion  of  infidelity  if  I  could  get  hold  of  her.'' 
Helen  was  then  thirteen,  and  Harriet  sixteen.  The 
little  poems  sent  to  Hogg  at  this  period  are 
expressive  of  Shelley's  feelings  at  the  time  : 

LOVE. 

Why  is  it  said  thou  canst  not  live 

In  a  youthful  breast  and  fair, 
Since  thou  eternal  life  canst  give — 

Canst  bloom  for  ever  there — 
Since  withering  pain  no  power  possessed, 

Nor  age  to  blanch  thy  vermeil  hue, 
Nor  Time's  dread  victor.  Death,  confessed, 

Though  bathed  with  his  poison-dew  ? 
Still  thou  retain'st  unchanging  bloom, 
Fixed,  tranquil  even  in  the  tomb. 

And  oh  !  when  on  the  blessed,  reviving, 

The  day-star  dawns  of  Love, 
Each  energy  of  soul  surviving 

More  vivid  soars  above, 
Hast  thou  ne'er  felt  a. rapturous  thrill, 

Like  June's  warm  breath  athwart  thee  fly. 
O'er  each  idea  then  to  steal, 

When  other  passions  die  ? — 
Felt  it  in  some  wild  noonday  dream, 
When  sitting  by  the  lonely  stream 
Where  silence  says  "  Mine  is  the  dell," 

And  not  a  murmur  from  the  plain, 
An:l  not  an  echo  from  the  fell. 
Disputes  her  silent  reign. 
{.April,  1811.) 

TO 

O  thou 
Whose  dear  love  gleamed  upon  the  gloomy  path 
Which  this  lone  spirit-  travelled,  drear  and  cold, 
But  swiftly  leading  to  those  awful  limits 
Which  mark  the  bounds  of  time,  and  of  the  space 
When  time  shall  be  no  more— wilt  thou  not  turn 
Those  spirit-beaming  eyes,  and  look  on  me. 
Until  I  lae  assured  that  earth  is  heaven, 
And  heaven  is  earth  ? 
(iSii.) 

V 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  107 

TO   A   STAR. 

Sweet  star,  which  gleaming  o'er  the  darksome  scene, 
Through  fleecy  clouds  of  silvery  radiance  fliest  ! 
Spanglet  of  light  on  evening's  shadowy  veil, 
Which  shrouds  the  day  beam  from  ihe  vvaveless  lake, 
Lighting  the  hour  of  sacred  Jove,  more  sweet 
Than  the  expiring  morn-star's  paly  fires! 
Sweet  star  !  when  wearied  Nature  sinks  to  sleep, 
And  all  is  hushed — all  save  the  voice  of  love, 
Whose  broken  murmurings  swell  the  balmy  blast 
Of  solt  Favonius,  which  at  intervals 
Sighs  in  the  ear  of  Stillness— art  thou  aught  but 
Lulling  the  slaves  of  interest  to  repose, 
With  that  mild  pitying  gaze  ?— Oh  !   I  would  look 
In  thy  dear  beam  till  every  bond  of  sense 
Became  enamoured  ! 
(1811.) 

In  the  middle  of  July,  181 1,  Shelley  relinquished 
his  previous  intention  of  joining  Hogg  at  York,* 
and  went  on  a  visit  to  his  cousin  Thomas  Grove,  at 
Cvvm  Elan  in  Radnorshire,  in  hopes  of  meeting  the 
Westbrooks  at  Aberystvvith,  where  they  were  about 
to  spend  part  of  the  summer.  But  while  looking 
forward  to  the  happy  moment  which  should 
reunite  him  to  Harriet,  he  fell  into  one  of  those 
states  of  despondency  which  all  his  stoicism  could 
not  subdue,  and  in  which  even  the  charms  of 
Nature   failed  to  afford  enjoyment. 

"This  is  most  divine  scenery,"  he  writes  to  Hogg,  "but 
ail  very  dull,  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable  ;  indeed  this  place 
is  a  very  great  bore.  I  am  now  with  people  who,  strange  to 
say,  never  think.  I  am  all  solitude.  ...  I  must  stay  here, 
however,  to  reciuit  my  finances,  compelled  now  to  ac- 
knowledge poverty  an  evil.  ...  I  do  not  see  a  soul  ;  all  is 
gloomy  and  desolate.  I  amuse  myself,  however,  with  read- 
ing Darwin,  climbing  rocks,  and  exploring  this  scenery." 

ïn  his  letters  to  Miss  Kitchener  he  discussed 
politics  and  sociology.     Equality — is  it  attainable? 

*  His  father  had  written  to  him,  "Go,  if  you  please,  to 
York,  but  not  with  my  money." 


îo8     SHELLEY^THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

If  unattainable,  yet  is  it  not  an  ideal  towards 
which  society  may  perpetually  advance?  .... 
With  a  juster  distribution  of  happiness  and  wealth, 
of  toil  and  leisure,  would  not  crime  and  the 
temptation  to  crime  almost  cease  to  exist .'' 
Would  not  the  rich  man  himself  be  better  off  if 
free  from  the  passions  and  evils  to  which  his 
hereditary  fortune  predestines  him  .■'  While  re- 
plying to  these  questions  with  a  conviction  that 
such  a  paradise  of  equality  need  not  be  a  visionary 
one,  he  could  not  refrain  from  casting  a  sorrowful 
and  prophetic  glance  at  the  actual  state  of  affairs, 
and  the  sanguinary  conflicts  that  must  needs  arise 
sooner  or  later  between  the  extremes  of  poverty 
and  wealth,  owing  to  the  fatal  effects  of  the  present 
system. 

He  illustrated  this  to  Miss  Kitchener  by  a 
striking  anecdote,  which,  when  related  by  him, 
becomes  symbolic  of  a  high  school  of  morality. 

My  window  is  over  the  kitchen.  In  the  morning  I  threw 
it  up,  and  had  nearly  finished  dressing,  when  "  For  the  love 
of  charity"  met  my  ear.  These  words  were  pronounced 
with  such  sweetness,  that  on  turning  round  I  was  surprised 
to  find  them  uttered  by  an  old  beggar,  to  whom  in  a  moment 
the  servant  brought  some  meat.  I  ran  down  to  give  him 
something.  He  appeared  extremely  grateful.  I  tried  to 
enter  into  conversation  with  him— in  vain  !  I  followed  him 
a  mile,  asking  a  thousand  questions.  At  length  I  quitted 
him,  finding  by  this  remarkable  observation  that  per- 
severance was.  useless  :  "  I  see  by  your  dress  that  you  are 
a  rich  man.  They  have  injured  me  and  mine  a  million 
times.  You  appear  to  me  well-intentioned,  but  I  have 
no  security  of  it  while  you  live  in  such  a  house  as  that,  or 
wear  such  clothes  as  those.  It  would  be  charitable  in  you 
to  leave  me." 

Meanwhile  Shelley  waited  in  vain  for  the  letter 
which  was  to  summon  him  to  Aberystwith. 

Mr.  Westbrook  had  brought  his  daughters  so 
far  as  Condowell  ;  but  there  he  suddenly  retraced 
his  steps  and  returned  to  London,with  the  intention 


V 


SHELLEY  /.V  LONDON.  icg 

of  placing'  Harriet  once  more  at  tlic  Clapham 
School.  Harriet  immediately  acquainted  Shelley 
with  the  plan,  on  which  he  endeavoured  to  befriend 
her  by  addressing  an  eloquent  letter  to  her  father; 
this  failed,  however,  to  soften  the  tyrant.  Harriet 
then  threw  herself  entirely  on  Shelley's  protection, 
declaring  she  was  ready  to  fly  with  him  whither- 
soever he  would.  Shelley's  scruples  vanished 
before  such  devotion,  and  hearkening  rather  to  the 
biddings  of  chivalrous  sentiment  than  to  those  of 
love,  or,  as  he  himself  described  it  after  the  event, 
"more"  from  "exerted  action  than  inspired 
passion,"  he  sacrificed  himself,  not  without  melan- 
choly forebodings,  and  accepted  enthusiastically  a 
duty  exacted  from  him  by  the  sufferings  and  love 
of  her  who  had  placed  herself  in  his  hands. 

In  the  first  glow  of  feeling  he  writes  to 
Hogg  : 

Her  father  has  persecuted  her  in  a  most  horrible  way  by 
endeavouring'  to  compel  her  to  go  to  school.  She  asked  my 
advice  :  resistance  was  the  answer,  at  the  same  time  that 
I  essayed  to  mollify  Mr.  Westbrook  in  vain  !  and  in  conse- 
quence of  my  advice  she  h;is  thrown  herself  upon  my  pro- 
tection. .  .  .  Gratitude  and  admiration  all  demand  that  I 
should  love  her  for  ever.  .  .  .  We  shall  have  ^200  a  year  ; 
when  we  find  it  run  short  wc  must  live,  I  suppose,  upon 
love  1  .  .  .  We  shall  see  you  at  York. 

Shelley  hastened  to  London,  where  he  found 
Harriet  ill  and  undecided.  Instigated  doubtless 
by  Eliza,  she  wished  to  make  sure  of  her  future 
position  by  a  formal  marriage.  This  was  also  the 
advice  of  Hogg,  who  Avas  an  ardent  partisan  of 
lawful  matrimony.  Shelley  yielded  to  the  opinion 
of  his  friend  ;  he  was  perfectly  indifferent  on 
his  own  account  to  the  views  of  the  world,  he 
only  yielded  to  considerations  of  Harriet's 
interests  and  happiness.  "A  woman's  happiness 
is  fragile,  all  too  easily  shattered,  and  therefore  to 
be  guarded  against  shock  or  stroke."     He  knew 


no  SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

also  "how  useless  "  it  was  "to  attempt  by  solitary 
and  isolated  examples  to  renovate  the  face  of 
society,  until  reason  shall  have  worked  so  radical 
a  change  that  the  experimenter  may  disregard 
vexations  from  the  results,  and  place  himself  above 
the  prejudice  with  which  his  opinion  would  be 
met  by  the  immense  majority." 

On  August  15,  i8ii,he  writes  to  Hogg:  "I 
am  become  a  perfect  convert  to  matrimony,  not 
from  temporising  but  from  jj/^?/r  arguments."*  A 
promise  of  marriage  was  therefore  given  to  both 
the  sisters,  and  only  money  was  wanting  to  carry 
out  the  elopement.  Shelley  borrowed  twenty-five 
pounds  from  the  father  of  his  cousin  Medwin, 
Finally,  after  several  secret  interviews  between  the 
lovers  in  the  presence  of  Charles  Grove,  one  fine 
morning  in  August  (Saturday,  the  24th,  says 
Mr.  Dowden)  Harriet  Westbrook  stepped  lightly 
and  gaily  into  the  hackney-coach  waiting  for  her 
at  a  coffee-house  door  in  Mount  Street,  the  two 
cousins  sprang  in  beside  her,  and  the  coach-wheels 
rattled  towards  the  Bull  and  Mouth,  where  the  trio 
waited  all  day  for  the  departure  of  the  Northern 
mail. 

*  "The  one  argument,  which  you  have  urged  so  often 
with  so  much  energy,  the  sacrifice  made  by  the  woman, 
so  disproporlioned  to  any  which  the  m:ui  can  make,  this 
alone  can  justify  me,  were  it  a  fault,  for  my  hesitating 
submission  to  your  superior  intellect.  .  .  .  My  father  is 
here,  much  astonished  probably  to  see  me  in  London.  He 
will  soon  be  more  so." 

According  to  some  letters  to  Miss  Hitchener  quoted 
by  Mr.  Dowden,  Shelley  spent  a  few  days  in  August  both  at 
Field  Place  and  at  Cuckfield,  where  he  again  met  his  friend, 
and  announced  to  her  his  intention  of  entering  the  "pro- 
fession of  physic."  But  he  was  soon  recalled  to  London  by 
a  pressing  letter  from  Harriet. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH,  YORK,  AND  KESWICK 
—  MOMENTARY  RUPTURE  WITH  HOGG- 
SHELLEY  AND   SOUTHEY— 181I-1812. 

At  midnight  the  mail-coach  stopped  a  few 
minutes  at  York,  and  Shelley  wrote  a  hurried 
note  to  Hogg:  "Harriet  is  with  me.  We  are 
in  a  slight  pecuniary  distress.  We  shall  have 
seventy-five  pounds  on  Sunday;  until  then,  can 
you  send  ten  pounds  ?  "  Hogg  did  better  than 
send  the  loan,  he  started  himself  for  Edinburgh. 
During  their  journey  Bysshe  and  Harriet 
had  met  with  a  young  Scots  advocate,  who  had 
explained  to  them  the  necessary  steps  for  con- 
tracting marriage  according  to  Scots  law.  Then 
on  their  arrival  in  Edinburgh  they  had  found 
excellent  rooms,  and  a  good-humoured  landlord 
who  agreed  to  advance  them  money,  on  the  one 
condition  that  Shelley  should  treat  himself  and 
his  friends  to  a  supper.  The  supper  accordingly 
took  place,  but  was  nigh  to  ending  with  a  tragedy. 
The  landlord's  roystering  friends  proposed  to 
invade  the  rooms  of  the  new-married  pair  at 
midnight  ;  and  Shelley,  in  extreme  indignation, 
caught  up  his  pistols  and  threatened  to  use  them 
if  they  ventured  on  such  a  liberty.     The  marriage 


112     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

was  solemnised  on  August  28th,  between  "  Percy 
Bysshe  "ShoiX^y,  fanner,  Sussex,  and  Miss  Harriet 
VVestbrook,  daughter  of  Mr.  John  Westbrook, 
London/^ 

When  Hogg  arrived,  the  wedding  was  over. 
Mr.  Timothy  Shelley  had  soon  been  informed 
of  the  great  event,  and  was  highly  indignant;  he 
instantly  cut  off  the  supplies,  and  Shelley  waited 
in  vain  for  his  quarterly  allowance  of  ^^50,  due 
in  September.  His  uncle  Pilfold  enabled  him 
to  pay  his  debts,  and  to"him  it  was  due  that  he 
did  not  remain  "chained  to  the  mud  and  com- 
merce of  Edinburgh.''^  Shelley's  father  next  broke 
out  into  lamentations  addressed  to  the  elder  Mr. 
Hogg,  for  it  was  presumed  "  that  Bysshe  having 
set  off  for  Edinburgh  with  a  young  female,  may 
stay  at  York  on  his  way,  and  God  only  knows 
what  may  happen  if  your  young  man  and  my 
young  man  should  meet  !  '^ 

Hogg's  arrival  was  the  crowning  joy  of 
Shelley's  happiness,  and  the  five  weeks  spent  by 
the  trio  in  Edinburgh  were  weeks  of  Eden-like 
felicity.  Hogg  was  dazzled  with  Harriet's  beauty; 
he  can  scarcely  paint  her  in  sufficiently  bright 
colours,   or  with   sufficiently  tender  touches  : 

If  it  was  agreeable  to  listen  to  her,  it  was  not  less 
agreeable  to  look  at  her  ;  she  was  always  pretty,  always 
bright,  always  blooming.  Without  a  spot,  without  a  wrinkle, 
not  a  hair  out  of  its  place. 

He  frequently  escorted  her  in  her  walks  ;  to- 
gether they  visited  Holyrood  Palace  and  Arthur's 
Seat.  He  was  shocked  at  the  insensibility  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  northern  metropolis  to  the 
charms  of  his  youthful  companion  : 

I  went  abroad  with  her  there  more  frequently,  but 
nobody  ever  noticed  her  ;  she  was  short,  and  slightly  and 
delicately  formed — not  raw-boned  enough  for  the  Scottish 
market. 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  113 

After  breakfast,  of  which  Shelley's  share  often 
consisted  of  bread  and  honey,  the  morning-  was 
passed  in  study  :  Shelley  ^translating  a  treatise  of 
Buffon  (probably  "  Les  Époques  de  la  Nature  "), 
while  Harriet  was  at  work  in  a  similar  way  on  a 
novel  by  Madame  Cottin,  "  Claire  d'Albe."*  The 
afternoon  was  devoted  to  walks,  and  on  their 
return  from  these,  a  little  serving-maid,  whose 
unmusical  Northern  accent  was  agonising-  to 
Shelley,  would  announce  that  tea  was  ready.  Tea- 
time  was  spent  in  philosophical  conversation; 
after  which  Harriet  would  begin  to  read  aloud 
in  her  clear,  sweet  voice.  "  Télémaque  ''  and 
*'  Bélisaire  "  were  her  favourite  books.f 

In  spite  of  the  charm  lent  to  Fénélon  and 
Marmontel  by  Harriet's  clear  voice,  Shelley  fre- 
quently yielded  to  ''innocent  slumbers ^^  which 
gave  serious  offence  to  the  fair  reader.  Before 
retiring  to  rest  the  three  friends  would  stroll  out 
to  admire  the  stars,  or  perhaps  the  famous  comet 
of  181 1.  On  one  Sunday  Shelley  was  induced  by 
Hogg  to  attend  divine  service  in  the  kirk.  "  I 
never  saw  Bysshe  so  dejected,'' says  Hogg;  "  .  .  . 
he  looked  the  picture  of  perfect  wretchedness  ; 
the  poor  fellow  sighed  piteously  as  if  his  heart 
would  break."  Yet  he  volunteered  to  be  present 
at  the  evening  Catechism,  The  extraordinary 
accent  with  which  the  catechist  put  his  questions 
to  his  young  neophytes  :  "  Wha  was  Adam  }  .  .  . 
Wha's  the  deil }  "  threw  him  into  a  fit  of  laughter 
that  forced  him  to  leave  the  church.     On  another 


*  The  novels  of  Madame  Cottin,  which  were  so  popular, 
especially  with  women,  at  the  beginning"  of  the  century,  were 
then  in  their  first  vogue.  ''  Harriet,''  says  Hogg,  "rendered 
the  two  volumes  exactly  and  correctly  ;  and  wrote  the  whole 
out  fairlv,  without  blot  or  blemish,  upon  the  smoothest, 
whitest,  finest  paper,  in  a  small,  neat,  fiowing,  and  legible 
feminine  hand." 

t  "  She  had  the  clearest  pronunciation  I  ever  heard." 

I 


114    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

occasion  he  incurred  the  severe  reproof  of  a  serious 
Scotchman,  by  his  wild  and  noisy  gaiety  in  the 
streets  on  the  Sabbath  day. 

When  their  means  began  to  be  exhausted,  the 
trio  returned  to  York,   travelling  by  post-chaise. 
The   weather   was  rainy,    and     Harriet,    to   make 
the  journey  pleasanter,   read    aloud    from    one  of 
Holcroft's    novels,*   which    seemed    anything  but 
amusing    to    Shelley;     he     derived    much    more 
pleasure  from  the  childlike  speeches  of  his  young 
bride,  whose  wonder  was  excited  by  every  novelty 
on  the  journey,  and  who,  as  a  "  little  Cockney,''* 
was  so  ignorant  of  the  objects  of  country  life  that 
she  had  to  learn  from  him  the  difference  between 
a  field  of  barley  and  a  field  of  turnips.     When  the 
horses  were   changed,    and    Hogg  busied    himself 
about  the  luggage,  Shelley  would  vanish.     Once 
at  Berwick,  all    was   ready  to  start,  but   Bysshe 
was  missing;    Hogg  went   in   pursuit,  and   found 
him    ''  in  a  drizzling  rain,    gazing   mournfully  at 
the   wild   and    dreary   sea,    with    looks    not    less 
wild   and  dreary."     The  travellers  reached  York 
on    a   rainy    evening    in    October.      The    young 
couple   found   lodgings,   '^'and    stayed    for   about 
ten    days    at    the    house    of    the    Misses    Dancer, 
Coney   Street,  the  dingy  dwelling    of  two    dingy 
old  milliners,  fatal  as  the  Valkyriœ,   two   of  the 
Fatal  Sisters  not  unworthy  of  a  place  in  the  Edda,. 
who  were  manifestly  designed  to  sew  shrouds,  hem 
winding-sheets,    and    make    mouldering    dresses 
for  the  dead."t 

Shelley  felt  little  of  that  interest  in  the  ancient 
city  of  York,  and  its  Christian  antiquities,  which 
would  have  been  excited  in  a  mind  less  full  of 
abstract  theories,  and  more  mindful  of  the  moral 

*  A  popular  novelist  and  comic  author  of  the  time. 

+  "York  at  tiiat  time,"  says  Hogg,  "  was  in  many  respects 
a  poor  city;  rich  only  in  ecclesiastical  and  civic  pride — and 
it  was  not  easy  to  find  good  lodgings." 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  115 

and  aesthetic  teachings  of  history.  The  marvellous^ 
Minster  appeared  to  him  but  a  huge  monument 
of  the  barbarism  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

"When  I  contemplate  these  gis^antic  piles  of  super- 
stition." he  writes  to  Miss  Hitchener  (October,  181 1),  "when 
I  consider,  too,  the  leisure  for  the  exercise  of  mind  which  the 
labour  which  eiected  them  annihilated,  I  set  them  down  as 
so  many  retardations  of  the  period  when  Truth  becomes 
omnipotent.  All  these  useless  ornaments  are  exertions 
of  bodily  labour  which,  though  trivial  separately  considered, 
when  united  destroy  a  vast  proportion  of  this  invaluable 
leisure.     How  many  things  could  we  do  without  !  " 

Shelley  was  occupied  with  other  cares,  above 
all  with  anxiety  about  the  means  of  living.  Ten 
days  had  passed  away  at  York,  and  his  father 
made  no  sign  of  loosening  his  purse-strings,  and 
Shelley  resolved  on  seeking  an  interview  with 
him  in  order  to  come  to  terms. 

"  I  had  thought,'"  he  wrote  to  Miss  Hitchener,  "that  this 
blind  resentment  had  long  been  banished  to  the  regions 
of  dulness,  comedies,  and  farces,  or  was  used  merely  to 
augment  the  difficulties  and  consequently  the  attachment  of 
the  hero  and  heroine  of  a  modern  novel.  I  have  written 
frequently  to  tliis  thoui^htless  man  [his  father],  and  am  now  • 
determined  to  visit  him,  in  order  to  try  the  torce  of  truth  ; 
though  1  must  confess  I  consider  it  nearly  as  hyperbolical  as 
'  music  rending  the  knotted  oak.'" 

The  journey  to  Sussex  offered  him,  besides, 
some  prospect  of  pleasure  in  a  visit  to  Miss 
Hitchener,  with  whom  his  relations  had  become 
closer,  more  confidential,  and  more  intimate  since 
his  marriage  with  Harriet.  Miss  Hitchener  had 
receive.',  the  news  of  his  union  with  a  woman 
.ko  nivi^.i  his  inferior  with  generous  kindness,  and 
had  expressed  the  sincerest  wishes  for  the  happi- 
ness of  both.  Shelley's  gratitude  was  boundless  ; 
he  felt  that  he  could  now  open  his  heart  without 
reserve  to  his  incomparable  friend  ;  he  could  tell 
her   that   he    loved   her   with  the    love  of  a   soul 

I  2 


îi6    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

for  a  soul — that  love  which  is  subject  neither  to 
lime,  nor  change,  nor  death,  and  which  is  the 
clearest  proof  of  our  immortality.  He  felt  it 
rather  embarrassing  to  explain  to  so  disinterested 
and  superior  a  woman  that  money  was  the  motive 
of  his  visit  to  Sussex.  "  But  even  the  considera- 
tion of  money  may  be  ennobled  by  the  thought 
that  the  true  use  of  wealth  is  to  procure  freedom 
for  those  we  love,  and  who  will  apply  their  freedom 
to  high  ends."  "Ought  he  not  to  share  his 
fortune  with  her  who  is  the  sister  of  his  soul, 
and  with  him  [probably  Hogg]  who  is  its  brother  1 
Surely  these  have  a  right  to  it  !  '^  * 

Full  of  these  thoughts,  Shelley  announced  to 
Hogg  his  intention  of  proceeding  to  Sussex  in 
search  of  money,  nor  could  he  be  dissuaded  by 
his  friend's  sensible  advice  from  undertaking 
the  journey.  He  departed,  leaving  his  young 
wife  to  the  guardianship  of  Hogg,  and  exposed 
to  the  suspicions  which  so  delicate  a  position 
must  inevitably  arouse  among  her  immediate 
neighbours. t  During  Shelley's  ab.sence,  Harriet 
spent  long  and  lonely  days  in  her  own  room  at 
York.  "  Even  when  it  was  fair,"  says  Hogg, 
"she  did  not  go  out,  having  unfortunately  trans- 
planted her  London  notions  of  propriety  to  York  ; 
she  considered  it  incorrect  to  walk  in  the  streets 
of  that  quiet  city  by  herself,  where  all  eyes  were 
attracted  by  her  beauty."  Hogg  came  to  see 
her  of  an  evening,  when  they  talked  together 
of  her  husband   or   her  family,  or   Harriet   read 


*  Letters  to  Miss  Kitchener,  October,  1811.  Miss 
Hitchener  had  the  good  feehng  to  refuse  the  oftered  share  ; 
all  she  asked  was  that  Shelley  would  put  aside  a  certain  sum 
to  provide  for  the  old  age  of  iNliss  Adams,  her  first 
instructress  and  "  the  mother  of  her  soul." 

t  Mr.  Jeaffreson  devotes  a  full  page  to  detailing  the 
hundred  and  one  solutions  by  which  the  old  milliners  may 
have  tried  to  account  for  Shelley's  sudden  departure. 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  117 

aloud  from  Holcroft  or  Robertson.  Suddenly, 
four-and-twenty  hours  before  the  return  of  Shelley, 
Eliza  Westbrook  appeared  upon  the  scene.  The 
elder  sister  had  only  been  waiting  for  an  oppor- 
tunity of  taking  the  young  couple  under  her 
guardianship,  and  she  had  now  found  it  in 
Harriet's  forsaken  condition  at  York.  Harriet 
had  frequently  spoken  to  Hogg  of  her  sister's 
beauty  ;  he  was  consequently  surprised  to  find 
her  face  "seamed  witli  the  small-pox,"  her  eyes 
dull  and  meaningless,  her  "beautiful  hair"  heavy 
and  coarse,  her  features  thin  and  unlovely.  From 
the  first  moment  of  their  meeting,  Eliza  and 
Hogg  were  enemies  ;  they  exchanged  looks  of 
aversion  and  dislike,  and  each  set  about  en- 
deavouring to  oust  the  other.  Hogg  at  once 
scented  danger  to  the  married  pair  in  the  presence 
of  this  shrew  in  their  household  ;  and,  in  fact, 
her  arrival  was  followed  by  a  sudden  reversal 
of  the  habits  of  the  little  circle. 

"The  house  lay,  as  it  were,  under  an  interdict,"  writes 
Hogg.  "  All  our  accustomed  occupations  were  suspended  ; 
study  was  forbidden  ;  reading  was  injurious  ;  to  read  aloud 
might  terminate  fatally  ;  to  go  abroad  was  death,  to  stay  at 
home  the  grave.  Bysshe  became  nothing  ;  I,  of  course,  very 
much  less  than  nothing.  .  .  . 

"  Harriet  still  existed,  it  was  true  ;  but  her  existence  was 
to  be  in  future  a  seraphic  life,  a  beatihc  vision,  to  be  passed 
exclusively  in  the  assiduous  contemplation  of  Eliza's  intinite 
perfections.  Before  the  angelic  vision,  we  had  never  heard 
of  Harriet's  nerves,  we  had  never  once  suspected  that  such 
organs  existed  ;  now  we  heard  of  little  else.  '  Dearest 
Harriet,  you  must  not  do  that  ;  only  consider  the  state 
of  your  nerves  !  Whatever  will  become  of  your  poor  nerves  ? 
What  would  Miss  Warne  say  ?'" 

Shelley's  journey  into  Sussex  had  brought 
him  naught  but  disappointrnent.  He  had  had, 
indeed,  the  happiness  of  meeting  Miss  Hitchener 
at  the  house  of  his  uncle  Pilfold  ;  but  his  father 
had   not    yielded   to   the   "force   of  truth,"    and. 


iiS     SHELLEY-THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

worse  still,  refused  to  give  any  pecuniary  help 
without  promises  of  submission  and  amendment. 
Hosrg's  first  counsel  to  his  friend  was  to  send 
Eliza  Westbrook  back  to  London  without  delay. 
But  Shelley  was  desirous  of  conciliating  his  father- 
in-law,  the  use  of  whose  purse  was  needful  at 
that  time,  and  judged  it  inexpedient  to  make 
a  declared  enemy  of  Eliza.  Hogg,  however, 
continued  to  display  his  hostility  to  the  unfor- 
tunate  kill-joy,  even  in  the  presence  of  Harriet. 

"Eliza,"  he  tells  us,  "spent  a  great  denl  of  her  time 
in  her  bedroom.  I  asked  Harriet  what  that  dear  Eliza  did 
alone  there  ?  '  Does  she  read  ?  '  '  No.'—'  Does  she  work  ?  ' 
'  Never.' — '  Does  she  write  ?  '  '  No.' — '  What  does  she  do, 
then?'  Harriet  came  quite  close  to  me,  and  answered 
in  a  whisper,  lest  peradventure  her  sister  should  hear  her, 
with  the  serious  air  of  one  who  communicates  some  profound 
and  weighty  secret,  'She  brushes  her  hair!'  .  .  .  One  day, 
whilst  the  guardian  angel  kept  on  brushing,  we  brushed  otî, 
and  wandered  to  the  river.  We  stood  on  the  l>igh  centre  of 
the  old  Roman  bridge  ;  there  was  a  mighty  flood  ;  father 
Ouse  hid  overflowed  his  banks,  carrying  with  him  timber, 
and  what  not.  '  Is  it  not  an  interesting,  a  surprising 
sight?' — 'Yes,  it  is  very  wonderful.  But,  deu"  Harriet,  how 
nicely  that  deatest  Eliza  would  spin  down  the  river  !  How 
sweetly  she  would  turn  round  and  round  like  that  log 
of  wood  !  And,  gracious  Heaven,  what  would  Miss  Warne 
say?'  She  turned  her  pretty  face  away  and  laughed— as  a 
slave  laughs  who  is  beginning  to  grow  weary  of  an  intolerable 
yoke.  ...  I  had  sometimes  spoken  of  my  intention  of  pay- 
ing a  visit  to  the  English  lakes,  which  visit  had  been 
exchanged  for  the  matrimonial  trip  to  Edinburgh.  The 
image  of  lakes,  mountains,  rocks,  and  waterfalls,  and  of  the 
like  picturesque  and  romantic  objects  which  those  districts 
present,  at  once  took  entire  possession  of  light  minds.  The 
young  couple  became  in  an  instant  as  to  thtir  whole  souls, 
demoniacally  possessed  by  the  Genius  of  the  Lakes,  and  it 
was  impossible  to  exorcise  them,  to  cast  out  the  mischievous 
spirit,  either  by  prayer,  or  fasting,  or  in  any  other  manner^ 
not  even  bv  bell,  book,  and  candle  ;  more  ei^peciilly  since 
their  Guardian  Angel,  smirking  in  silence,  no  doubt  favoured 
the  sudden  fancy." 

HoCTg    was     invited,    for    manners'    sake,    to 


'&& 


accompany  the  trio.     He  explained  in  his  most 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  iicj 

"humorous  lancjuage  that  his  affairs  required  his 
presence  at  York  ;  that  November  was  not  the 
right  season  for  an  excursion  out  of  the  way 
of  everybody  and  everything;  that  Skiddavv^ 
Helvellyn,  Derwentwater,  and  Lodore  would 
still  be  there  next  summer;  Southey  and  Words- 
worth as  well  .  .  .  and  even  the  asses  they  had 
so  gloriously  apostrophised  and  so  sweetly  sung. 
"We  mu^t  go  to  Keswick,  go  thither  at  once  and 
remain  there  for  ever  !  Impossible  to  remain  any- 
longer  in  such  an  unpoetical,  uninspiring  hole 
as  York  ;  and  you,  Hogg,  you  yourself  will  soon 
rejoin  your  friends  at  Keswick  and  stay  with  them 
for  ever  !  " 

Great  was  Hogg's  surprise  when,  on  going  to 
their  lodgings  one  evening  to  dinner,  he  found  the 
birds  flown.  An  illegible  pencilled  note  informed 
him  that  his  friends  had  gone  to  Richmond,  and 
invited  him  to  join  them  there. 

Were  this  part  of  Shelley's  life  only  known 
to  us  through  Hogg's  narrative,  we  might  justly 
accuse  the  former  of  strange  inconstancy  towards 
that  "friend  of  his  soul  "  from  whom  he  had  sworn 
nothing  should  separate  him.  Fortunately  for  us, 
and  unfortunately  for  Hogg,  there  are  other 
accounts,  which,  owing  to  the  revelations  of  Mr. 
Dovvden,  throw  complete  light  on  this  painful 
incident  in  Shelley's  history.  The  following  facts 
are  derived  from  Shelley's  hitherto  unpublished 
letters  to  Miss  Hitchener. 

On  Shelley's  return  to  York  he  noticed  that 
Harriet's  attitude  towards  his  friend  was  greatly 
changed,  and  that  she  regarded  him  with  dislike. 
He  inquired  into  her  reasons,  and  discovered  that 
his  beloved  friend  had  endeavoured  to  seduce  his 
wife.  The  first  advances  had  been  made  imme- 
diately after  their  removal  to  York,  and  he  had 
renewed  his  hateful  attempts  during  the  absence 
of  Shelley.     Harriet  had  recalled  him   to   reason 


I20    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

and  to  duty,  on  which  Hogg,  acknowledging  his 
weakness  and  error,  had  offered,  by  way  of  ex- 
piation^ to  write  to  Shelley  and  confess  all  to 
him.  Harriet  had  opposed  this  plan,  fearing  the 
effects  of  such  a  communication  on  the  mind  of 
the  poet,  and  on  the  following  day  Shelley  had 
returned. 

What  a  blow  for  Shelley  !  What  must  be 
thought  of  the  human  race,  if  that  superior  being, 
"made,"  as  he  said,  "to  give  laws  to  us  poor 
creatures  who  crawl  here  below,^'  could  be  capable 
of  such  a  cowardly  act  ?  But  it  was  impos- 
sible ;  it  was  a  mistake  ;  his  friend  was  the 
victim  of  prejudice — he  could  not  be  wholly  lost  I 
Shelley  determined  to  seek  an  explanation  with 
Hogg. 

"We  walked  to  the  fields  beyond  York,"  he  writes  to 
Miss  Kitchener.  "  I  desired  to  know  fully  the  account  of 
this  affair.  I  heard  \t  frotn  him,  and  I  believe  he  was  sin- 
cere. All  that  I  can  recollect  of  that  terrible  day  was  that 
I  pardoned  him — fully,  freely  pardoned  him  ;  that  I  would 
still  be  a  friend  to  him,  and  hoped  soon  to  convince  him 
how  lovely  virtue  was  ;  that  his  crime,  not  himself,  was  the 
object  of  my  detestation  ;  that  I  value  a  human  being  not 
for  what  it  has  been,  but  for  what  it  is  ;  that  I  hoped  the 
time  would  come  when  he  would  regard  this  horrible  error 
with  as  much  disgust  as  I  did.  He  said  little  ;  he  was  pale, 
terror-struck,  remorseful.  Oh,  it  is  terrible  !  .  .  .  This  stroke 
has  almost  withered  my  being.  Were  it  not  for  the  dear 
friend  whose  happiness  I  so  much  prize,  which  at  some 
future  period  I  may  perhaps  constitute— did  1  not  live  for 
an  end,  an  aim,  sanctified,  hallowed — I  mioJit  have  slept  in 
peace.  Yet  no,  not  ciuite  that  ;  I  might  have  been  a  colonist 
in  Bedlam.  Never  shall  that  intercourse  cease  which  has 
been  the  day-dawn  of  my  existence,  the  sun  which  has  shed 
warmth  on  the  cold,  drear  length  of  the  anticipated  prospect 
of  life  !  ...  I  could  have  borne  to  die,  to  die  eternally  with 
my  once-loved  friend.  I  could  coolly  have  listened  to  the 
conclusions  of  reason  ;  I  could  have  unhesitatingly  sub- 
mitted. Earth  seemed  to  be  enough  for  our  intercourse  ; 
on  earth  its  bounds  appeared  to  be  stated,  as  the  event  hath 
dreadfully  proved.  But  with  j'(7«,  your  friendship  seems  to. 
have  generated  a  passion  to  which  fifty  such  fleeting,  inadc- 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  12 ï 

quate  existences  as  these  appear  to  be  but  the  drop  in  the 
bucket,  too  trivial  for  account.  With  you,  I  cannot  submit 
to  perish  like  the  flower  of  the  field  ;  1  cannot  consent  that 
the  same  shroud  which  shall  moulder  around  these  perishing' 
frames  shall  enwrap  the  vital  spirit  which  hath  produced, 
sanctified  —  may  I  say  eternised? — a  friendship  such  as 
ours." 

Under  such  circumstances  as  these,  it  was 
needful  for  Harriet's  sake  to  part  from  Hogg  j 
Shelley  did  not  hesitate,  and  they  started  for 
Keswick. 

Whatever  Hogg  might  say,  he  could  have  felt 
little  surprise  at  the  sudden  departure  of  the 
Shelleys,  and  in  place  of  humorous  remarks  on 
the  Cumberland  Lakes  and  the  ass  celebrated  by 
Wordsworth,  he  had  to  face  a  situation  in  which  he 
played  Werther  to  the  Albert  and  Charlotte  of 
Shelley  and  Harriet. 

He  despatched  one  despairing  letter  after 
another  to  his  friends,  imploring  Harriet's  forgive- 
ness, without  which  he  says  he  will  blow  his  brains 
out  at  her  feet.  He  entreats  to  be  once  more 
admitted  to  their  friendship  ;  and  hurt  alike  by 
his  friend's  generosity  and  by  his  refusal,  he 
appeals  to  the  conventional  feeling  of  honour,  and 
offers  reparation  by  a  duel.  Shelley  rejects  the 
proposal  with  horror  ;  "  he  has  no  right  either  to 
take  the  life  of  another,  or  to  risk  his  own,"  Hogg 
thereupon  takes  up  his  own  defence,  alleging  the 
violence  of  his  passion  and  his  high  sense  of 
honour.  A  correspondence  lasting  five  or  six  weeks, 
to  which  Harriet  herself  contributed,  ensued.* 

A  curious  fragment  has  been  preserved  for 
us  in  Hogg's  "  Life  of  Shelley,"  under  the  title 
of    "  Fragment    of  a    Novel,"    in    which    Shelley, 

*  It  is  unfortunate  that  we  possess  none  of  Harriet's 
letters  on  this  subject.  Hogg-,  who  boasts  of  his  corre- 
spondence with  her,  states  that  he  has  lost  them,  "  although 
he  vaguely  remembers  to  have  placed  them  aside,"  but  has 
forgouen  with  what  i-ntention. 


122     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

says  his  ingenious  biograplier,  proposed  to  write 
a  sequel  t^j  Goethe's  "Werther/'  but  wherein  the 
reader  easily  discerns  the  situation,  and  recognises 
the  true  actors  in  the  drama  under  their  assumed 
names  of  Albert,  Werther,  and  Charlotte. 

There  were  three  great  attractions  for  Shelley 
in  Cumberland,  namely,  the  picturesque  scenery 
of  that  English  Switzerland,  the  society  of  the 
Duke  of  Norfolk,  and  that  of  the  Lake  poets, 
Wodsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Southey,  whose  fame 
was  increasing  day  by  day. 

Towards  the  end  of  November  the  trio  reached 
Keswick,  a  town  lying  in  the  heart  of  the  moun- 
tains, near  the  lakes  of  Derwentwater  and  Bassen- 
thwaite,  both  of  which  are  visible  from  the  garden 
of  Chestnut  Cottage,  where  our  travellers  in- 
stalled themselves.  The  sublime  calm  of  the 
magnificent  scenery  brought  peace  to  Shelley's 
troubled  soul. 

"  I  have  taken,"  he  writes  to  Miss  Kitchener  on  Novem- 
ber 23rd,  iSii,  "a  long  solitary  ramble  to-day.  These 
gigantic  mountains  piled  on  each  other,  these  waterfalls, 
these  million-shaped  clouds  tinted  by  the  varying  colonrs  of 
innLimerab!e  rainbows  hanging-  between  y  .ursslf  and  a  lake 
as  smooth  and  dark  as  a  plain  of  polished  jet— oli,  these  are 
sights  attunable  to  the  contemplation  !  ...  I  have  been 
thinking  of  you  and  of  human  nature.  Your  letter  has  been 
the  partner  01  my  solitude— or  rather  I  have  not  been  alone, 
for  you  havs  bean  with  me."  And  in  a  Ia:er  ieiter  :  "  These 
mountains  are  now  capped  with  snow.  The  lake,  as  I  see  it 
hence,  is  glassy  and  calm.  Snow-vapours,  tinted  by  the 
loveliest  colours  of  refraction,  pass  far  below  the  summits  of 
these  giant  rocks.  The  scene,  even  in  a  winter's  sunset, 
is  inexpressibly  lovely.  What  will  it  ba  in  summer  ?  What 
when  you  are  here  ?" 

But  the  scenery  was  spoilt  for  Shelley  by 
the  inhabitants. 

"Though  the  face  of  the  country  is  lovely,"  he  wrote  to 
Miss  Kitchener  on  January  7th,  1812,  " ihe  people  axe 
detestable,  i  he  manufacturers,  with  their  (  oni.imination, 
have  crept  into  the  peacelul  vale  and  deformed  the  loveliness 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  123 

-of  nature  with  human  taint.  The  debauched  servants  of  the 
great  famihes  who  resort  contribute  to  the  total  extinction  of 
morahty.  Keswick  seems  more  hke  a  suburb  of  London 
than  a  ^'illage  of  Cumbeiland.  .  .  .  Strange  prejudices  have 
these  country  people.  1  must  relate  one  very  singular  one. 
The  other  night  I  was  explaining  to  Harriet  and  Eh'za  the 
nature  of  the  atmosph^^re,  and  to  ilkistrate  my  theory  I  made 
some  experiments  on  h)drogen  gas,  one  of  its  constituent 
parts.  This  was  in  the  garden,  and  the  vivid  flame  was 
seen  at  some  distance.  A  few  days  after  Mr.  Dare  entered 
our  cottage  and  said  he  had  something  to  say  to  me.  'Why, 
sir,'  said  he,  '  I  am  not  satisfied  with  you.  I  wish  you 
to  leave  my  house.'  'Why,  sir?'  'Because  the  country 
talks  very  strangely  of  your  proceedings.  Odd  things  have 
been  seen  at  night  near  your  dwelling.  I  am  very  ill- 
satisfied  with  this.  Sir,  I  don't  like  to  t  ilk  cf  it.  I  wish  you 
to  provide  yourself  elsewhere.'  I  have  with  much  difficulty 
c|uietcd  Mr.  Dare's  fears.  He  does  not,  however,  much  like 
us,  and  I  am  by  no  means  certain  that  he  will  permit 
us  to  remain.'' 

In  the  presence  of  the  sublime  lake-scenery 
Shelley's  poetical  nature  awoke.  The  grand  voice 
of  the  mountains,  which  he  will  afterwards  hear 
still  more  resonant  at  the  foot  of  Mont  Blanc,  that 
great  voice  "able  to  abrogate  the  vast  codes  of 
error  and  fraud,"  awoke  favourite  dreams,  visions 
of  another  golden  age,  in  the  poet's  heart.  He 
contemplated  a  poem  designed  to  set  forth  as 
in  a  picture  "  the  manners,  simplicity,  and  de- 
lights of  a  perfect  state  of  society."  "  Will  you 
assist  me?"  he  wrote  to  Miss  Hitchener,  "I 
only  thought  of  it  last  night.  I  design  to  ac- 
complish it  and  publish  it.  Then  I  shall  draw 
a  picture  of  Heaven.  I  can  do  neither  without 
some  hints  from  you.  The  latter  I  think  you 
ought  to  make  y  From  that  night  the  idea  of 
"Queen  Mab"  and  "Prometheus''  existed  in 
germ  in  Shelley's  imagination.  Meanwhile  he 
busied  himself  in  collecting  hi?  shorter  lyrics, 
the  offspring  of  his  early  Mus;;,  intending  to 
publish  them  with  the  following  epigraph: 

I  &ing,  and  Liberty  may  love  the  song, 


124    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

for  the  use  of  those  philosophical  and  reflecting 
minds  "  who  love  to  trace  the  early  state  of 
human  feelings  and  opinions."  But  he  chiefly- 
interested  himself  while  at  Keswick  in  the  com- 
position of  a  novel,  "  Hubert  Cauvin,"  in  which 
he  described  "  the  state  of  morals  and  opinions 
in  France  during  the  latter  years  of  the  Monarchy," 
and  exhibited  the  causes  of  the  failure  of  the 
French  Revolution.*  His  conception  of  a  novel 
had  entirely  changed  since  he  wrote  "  Zastrozzi  '* 
and  "  St.  Irvyne."  He  writes  to  Miss  Hitchener 
on  January  2nd,  1812  :  "I  design  to  exclude  the 
sexual  passion  ;  and  I  think  the  keenest  satire 
on  its  intemperance  will  be  complete  silence  on 
the  subject.  I  have  already  done  about  200 
pages  of  this  work  and  about  150  of  the  essays. ^'-j- 

But  neither  poetry  nor  the  charms  of  Nature 
could  enable  Shelley  to  forget  his  straitened 
means.  It  became  more  than  ever  important 
for  him  to  see  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  and  induce 
him  to  exert  his  influence  as  mediator  with  the 
poet's  father.  The  Duke,  who  at  Shelley's  re- 
quest had  just  made  one  useless  attempt  to  soften 
Mr,  Timothy  Shelley,  no  sooner  heard  of  the 
Percy  Shelleys'  arrival  at  Keswick  than  he 
hastened  to  invite  them  to  Greystoke. 

This  visit  exhausted  the  poet's  last  resources^ 
and  on  November  30th  he  wrote  to  his  cousin's 
father,  the  elder  Medwin  : 

We   are  now  so  poor   as   to  be  actually  in    danger  of 
every  day  being  deprived  of  the  necessaries  of  life.  ...   I 


*  "You  will  see  in  my  'Hubert  Cauvin,'"  he  writes 
in  another  letter,  "  that  I  have  spoken  of  the  policy  of 
expediency,  insincerity,  mystery,  as  the  immediate  causes  of 
violence  and  blood  in  the  French  Revolution." 

t  Probably  essays  on  moral  and  political  subjects.  No 
trace  of  "  Hubert  Cauvin"  can  now  be  found  in  print 
or  manuscript. 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  125 

would  thank  you  to  remit  me  a  small  sum  for  immediate 
expenses.  .  .  .  Mr.  Westbrook  has  sent  me  a  small  sum, 
with  an  intimation  that  we  are  to  expect  no  more  ;  this 
suffices  for  the  immediate  discharge  of  a  few  debts  ;  and  it 
•is  nearly  with  our  very  last  guinea  that  we  visit  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk  at  Greystoke  to-morrow.  We  return  to  Keswick  on 
Wednesday.  I  have  very  few  hopes  from  this  visit.  That 
reception  into  Abraham's  bosom  \i.e.,  a  possible  reconcilia- 
tion with  his  father]  appeared  to  me  to  be  the  consequence 
of  some  infamous  concessions  which  are,  I  suppose,  synony- 
mous with  duty. 

The  Duke  showed  much  courteous  goodwill 
towards  the  poet,  whom  he  wished  to  attract 
to  political  life.  Bysshe,  Harriet,  and  Eliza  spent 
a  few  pleasant  days  at  Greystoke,  from  December 
4th  to  the  8th  or  9th.  "Jew''  Westbrook's 
daughters  bore  themselves  well  in  the  high  and 
brilliant  company  to  which  they  were  introduced. 
Shelley,  although  of  polished  manners  and  ac- 
customed to  society,  felt  ill  at  ease  and  -out  of 
his  element  at  the  miniature  court. 

"  Fatigued  with  aristocratical  insipidity,"  he  wrote  to 
Miss  Hitchener,  "left  alone  scarce  one  moment  by  those 
senseless  monopolisers  of  time  that  form  the  court  of  a  duke 
who  would  be  very  well  as  a  man,  how  delightful  to  com- 
mune with  the  soul  that  is  undisguised,  whose  importance  no 
arts  are  necessary  nor  adequate  to  exalt  !  " 

The  visit  to  Greystoke  produced  an  immediate 
and  excellent  effect  on  Shelley's  father  and  grand- 
father. Shelley  had  not  long  returned  to  Keswick 
when  he  heard  through  his  uncle  Pilfold  of  the 
good  disposition  felt  towards  him  at  Field  Place. 
Mr.  Timothy  Shelley  was  willing  to  allow  his 
son  an  annual  income  of  ;i^2000,  if  the  latter  would 
consent  to  entail  the  estate  on  his  eldest  son, 
or,  in  default  of  issue,  on  his  brother.  On  hearing 
of  this  proposal,  Shelley's  wrath  and  indignation 
were  extreme. 

"  Silly  dotards  !  "  he  wrote  to  Miss  Hitchener,  "  do  they 
think  I  can  be  thus  bribed  and  ground  into  an   act  of  such 


126    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

contemptible  injustice  and  inutility  .  .  .  that  I  will  forswear 
my  principles  in  consideration  of  ^2,000  a  year?  .  .  .  tliat  I 
should  entail  ;^  120  000  of  command  over  labour,  of  power  to 
remit  this,  to  employ  it  for  beneficent  purposes  on  one  whom 
I  know  not — who  might,  instead  of  being  the  benefactor  of 
mankind,  be  its  bane.  .  .  .  No  !  this  you  will  not  suspect 
me  of." 

Among  the  guests  at  Greystoke,  one,  in  par- 
ticular, had  attracted  Shelley,  and  soon  became 
his  friend. 

"  He  was  an  elderly  man,"  wrote  Shelley,  ''  who  seemed 
to  know  all  my  concerns,  and  the  expression  of  his  face, 
whenever  1  held  the  arguments  which  I  do  eveiywhere,  was 

such  as  I  shall  not  readily  forget We  have  met  him 

be'bre  in  these  mountains,  and  his  particular  look  then 
struck  Harriet." 

This  noticeable  man  was  Mr.  Calvert,  a  Liberal 
in  politics,  an  interested  amateur  of  scientific  ex- 
periment, and  a  friend  of  Wordsworth  and  Cole- 
ridge. Wordsworth  describes  him  in  the  "  Castle 
of  Indolence"  as 

A  noticeable  man,  with  large  gray  eyes. 

It  was  at  Mr.  Calvert's  house  that  Shelley  first 
met  Southey. 

Shelley  was  even  more  attracted  by  men  of 
letters  and  poets  than  by  the  Duke  of  Norfolk. 
But  he  was  less  successful  in  making  their  ac- 
quaintance on  this  occasion.  The  Lake  poets, 
with  the  exception  of  Southey,  eluded  him. 
Wordsworth,  who  read  none  of  the  literature  of 
the  day,  was  unacquainted  with  him,  and  was 
destined  to  remain  so  for  a  considerable  period. 
Coleridge  *   lamented   subsequently   that   he   had 

*  Hogg  has  transmitted  to  us  the  following  interesting 
fragment  of  a  letter  from  Coleridge  on  the  subject  of  Shelley  : 

"I  think  as  highly  of  Shelley's  genius — yea,  and  of  his 
heart — as  you  can  do.  Soon  after  he  left  Oxford  he  went  to 
the  Lakes,  poor  fellow  !  and  with  some  wish,  I  have  under- 
stood, to  see  me  ;  but  I  was  absent,  and  Southey  received 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  127 

missed  the  opportunity  of  becoming  acquainted 
with  the  young  philosopher,  to  whom  he  would 
have  been  of  more  use,  he  said,  than  was  Southey. 
Another  celebrated  writer  and  critic  (De  Ouincey, 
the  opium-eater),  was  likewise  destined  to  regret 
that,  without  the  excuse  of  absence,  he  had  failed  to 
make  the  acquaintance  of  a  brother-Oxonian  and 
man  of  letters. 

"  Some  neighbourly  advantages  I  might  certainly  have 
placed  at  Shelley's  disposal,"  he  said  many  years  after- 
wards in  the  curious  article  he  wrote  upon  Shehey  in  Tail's 
Edinburgh  Magazine  (1846).  "Grasmere, for  instance,  itself, 
which  tempted  at  that  time  by  a  beauty  which  had  not  been 
sullied  ;  \\  ordsworth,  who  then  lived  at  Grasmere  ;  Elleray 

him  instead.  Now — the  very  reverse  of  what  would  have 
been  the  case  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  — I 
might  have  been  of  use  to  him,  and  Southey  could  not  ;  for 
I  should  have  sympathised  with  his  poetics,  metaphysical 
reviews — and  the  very  word  metaphysics  is  an  abomination 
to  Southey  ;  and  Shelley  would  have  felt  that  I  understood 
him.  His'  discussions— tending  towards  Atheism  of  a  certain 
sort— woulti  not  have  scared  ine;  for  Jiie  it  would  have  been 
a  semi-transparent  larva,  soon  to  be  sloughed,  and  through 
which  I  should  have  seen  the  true  image— the  final  meta- 
morphosis, besides,  I  have  ever  thought  that  sort  of 
Atheism  the  next  best  religion  to  Christianity  ;  nor  does  the 
belt- r  faith  I  have  learnt  from  Paul  and  John  interfere  for 
the  cordial  reverence  1  feel  for  Benedict  Spinoza.  As  far  as 
Robert  Southey  was  concerned  with  them,  I  am  quite  certain 
that  his  harshness  arose  entirely  from  the  frightful  reports 
that  had  been  made  to  him  respecting  Shelley's  moral 
character  and  conduct— reports  essentially  false— but,  for  a 
man  of  Southey's  strict  regularity  and  habitual  self-govern- 
ment, rendered  plausible  by  Shelley's  own  wild  words  and 
horror  ol  hypocrisy." 

When  penning  these  words  Coleridge  had  doubtless 
fresh  in  his  memory  the  stanzas  in  which  Shelley  opens  his 
heart  to  him,  and  traces  for  him  the  history  of  his  thought, 
and  the  deceptions  his  soul  suffered  in  his  search  for  the 
ideal.  (See  "Lines  to  Coleridge,"  among  the  "Early  Poems.") 
In  connection  with  this  subject,  the  portrait  Shelley  has 
drawn  of  the  great  Lake  poet  in  "The  Letter  to  Klaria 
Gisborne  ''  will  be  read  with  interest,  as  well  as  the  lines 
referring  to  him  in  "  Peter  Bell  the  Third." 


128    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

and  Professor  Wilson,  nine  miles  further;  finally,  my  own 
library,  which,  being  rich  in  the  wickedest  of  German 
speculations,  would  have  been  more  to  Shelley's  taste  than 
the  Spanish  library  of  Southey.  .But  all  these  temptations 
were  negatived  for  Shelley  by  his  sudden  departure.  Ap- 
parently he  had  the  instinct  within  him  of  his  own  Wandering 
Jew  for  restlessness." 

Southey  was  more  curious  and  more  cautious  ; 
he  invited  Shelley  to  visit  him  ;  and  the  two  poets 
were  soon  on  a  footing  of  mutual  regard,  if  not 
©'"positive  friendship.  Southey  admired  the  talent 
of  the  young  thinker,  and  believed  him  to  be  good 
and  generous  of  heart.  He  saw  in  him  the  Southey 
of  1794.  The  writings  of  the  future  Laureate, 
those  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  and  the  "Gebir" 
of  Landor,  were  favourite  subjects  of  study  with 
Shelley.  Southey  was  endeared  to  him  as  a  poet 
who  had  been  ardent  in  the  cause  of  the  French 
Revolution,  and  severely  handled  by  Canning  in 
the  Anti-Jacobin.  His  "Wat  Tyler"  and  his  "Joan 
of  Arc,"  in  which  he  called  kings  the  murderers  of 
mankind,  had  placed  him  in  the  van  of  English 
Jacobinism.  He  had  been  a  fervent  admirer  of 
Mary  Wollstonecraft,  and,  together  with  Coleridge, 
one  of  the  principal  castigators  of  that  republican 
propaganda  which,  having  failed  in  England,  was 
endeavouring  to  found  a  model  Republic  or 
Pantisocracy  *  in  America. 

On  introducing  himself  to  Southey,  Shelley 
was  mindful  of  the  strong  emotion  he  had 
experienced  on  reading  the  "  Letters  from 
Espriella,^^  that  pathetic  picture  of  the  sufferings 
of  the  poor,  the  misery  of  the  working  classes,  and 
the  barbarities  of  martial  law. 

But,  however  ready  Shelley  might  be  to  admire, 
and  Southey  to  be  admired,  friendship  was  difficult 
between  two  men  whose  genius  and  whose  opinions 

*  See  an  allusion  to  this  in  his  satire  on  literary  apostates. 
"  Peter  Bell  the  Third." 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  129 

differed  so  widely.  Southey,  at  thirty-seven,  was 
tinctured  with  the  pride  and  arrogance  of  an 
aspirant  to  the  laureateship.  He  was  a  pedagogue 
as  well  as  a  poet.  Shelley  found  him  narrow  and 
limited,  doling  out  his  hospitality  parsimoniously, 
listening  to  the  younger  man  out  of  curiosity  and 
by  way  of  pastime,  treating  him  as  an  inferior, 
almost  as  a  child. 

Southey  possessed  a  fine  library  of  rare  books 
in  every  language,  especially  Spanish  ;  his  house 
was  crowded  Vv'ith  books  even  to  the  staircase. 
But  they  might  not  be  touched  without  per- 
mission. Shelley  saw  little  of  them  beyond  their 
binding  and  titles.  Occasionally  Southey  would 
take  one  down  and  read  some  passages  to  his 
guest,  to  whom  they  seemed  mere  puerilities.  He 
was  not  partial  to  discussion,  and  stated  his 
own  opinion  dogmatically.  He  resembled  rather 
a  living  and  speaking  register  of  extracts  than 
a  man.  He  usually  put  an  end  to  the  con- 
troversy by  a  quotation  which  he  regarded  as 
decisive  to  a  reasonable  mind,  and  when  Shelley 
gave  vent  to  his  ideas  in  enthusiastic  and  im- 
petuous language,  Southey  would  remark:  "No 
doubt,  no  doubt  ;  I  thought  and  spoke  just  as 
you  do  when   I   was  your  age." 

After  some  conversations  of  the  kind,  Shelley 
wrote  to  Godwin  : 

Southey  the  poet,  whose  principles  were  pure  and 
elevated  once,  is  now  the  paid  champion  of  every  abuse  and 
absurdity.  I  have  had  much  conversation  with  him.  He 
says,  "You  will  think  as  I  do  when  you  arc  as  old."  I  do 
not  feel  the  least  disposition  to  be  Mr.  S.'s  proselyte. 

In  a  letter  to  Misj  Hitchener,  December  26th, 
181 1,  Shelley  recounts  his  principal  grievances 
against  Southey  : 

I  have  also  been  much  engaged  in  talking  with  Southey. 
You  may  conjecture  that  a  man  must  possess  high  and  esti- 

K 


I30    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

mnble  qualities  if,  with  the  prejudices  of  such  total  differences 
from  my  sentiments,  I  can  regard  hmi  great  and  worthy. 
In  fact,  Southey  is  an  advocate  of  liberty  and  equality.  He 
looks  forward  to  a  state  when  all  shall  be  perfected,  and 
matter  become  subjected  to  the  omnipotence  of  mind.     But 

he  is  now  an  advocate  for  existing  establishments 

Southey  hates  the  Irish  ;  he  speaks  against  Catholic  emanci- 
pation and  Parliamentary  reform.  In  all  these  things  we 
differ,  and  our  differences  were  the  subject  of  a  long  conver- 
sation. Southey  calls  himself  a  Christian  ;  but  he  does  not 
believe  that  the  evangelists  were  inspired  ;  he  rejects  the 
Trinity,  and  thinks  that  Jesus  Christ  stood  precisely  in  the 
same  relation  to  God  as  himself.  Yet  he  calls  him- 
self a  Christian.  Now,  if  ever  there  was  a  definiiion 
of  a  Deist,  I  think  it  could  never  be  clearer  than  this 
confession  of  faith.  But  Southey,  though  far  from  being 
a  man  of  great  reasoning  powers,  is  a  great  man.  He  has 
all  that  characterises  the  poet  ;  great  eloquence,  though 
obstinacy  in  opinion,  which  arguments  are  the  last  things 
that  can  shake.     He  is  a  man  of  virtue. 

While  retaining  a  high  esteem  for  Southey's 
talent,  Shelley  left  Keswick  with  a  poor  idea 
of  his  character,  especially  of  the  fixity  of  his 
opinions.  As  for  Southey  himself,  he  might  not 
lay  down  his  arms.  The  future  author  of  ''  Queen 
Mab"  and  "  Laon  and  Cythna"  will  be  in  his 
eyes  a  leader  of  what  he  will  choose  to  call  the 
"  Satanic  School,"  and,  being  no  longer  ignorant 
as  he  was  when  at  Keswick,  will  be  described 
as  "  a  perverse  will  and  a  corrupt  heart." 

Some  years  later,  Southey  gave  full  bent  to 
these  impressions  in  a  letter  to  Shelley  which 
cannot  be  too  severely  condemned,  Shelley  had 
written  to  him  for  an  explanaiiion  of  the  attacks 
on  Keats  in  the  "  Quarterly."  Southey,  instead  of 
excusing  the  writer  of  the  article,  breaks  out 
into  violent  recrimination  against  Shelley  him- 
self, making  use  even  of  certain  confidential 
communications  concerning  his  first  marriage 
that  Shelley  had  made  to  him  when  at  Keswick. 
"This  letter,"  says  Medwin,  "opened  all  the 
old   wounds,   and  hurt    Shelley  cruelly  for   some 


SHELLEY  AT  EDINBURGH.  131 

time."  And  Byron,  in  his  "  Conversations/'  thus 
stigmatises  Southey's  conduct  : 

Shame  on  the  man  who  could  revive  the  memory  of  a 
misfortune  of  which  Shelley  was  altogether  innocent,  and 
ground  scandal  upon  falsehood  !  What  !  have  the  audacity 
to  confess  that  he  had  for  ten  years  treasured  up  some 
observations  of  Shelley's  made  at  his  own  table  ! 

Disappointed  in  his  hero-worship  of  Southey, 
Shelley  turned  with  delight  to  her  who,  at  that 
period,  symbolised  all  that  was  wanting  in  the 
human  beings  arotind  him.  His  dream  was  to 
conquer  liberty  and  happiness  for  the  whole 
world. 

If  two  hearts,  panting  for  the  happiness  and  liberty  of 
mankind,  were  joined  by  union  and  proximity,  as  they  are 
by  friendship  and  sympathy,  what  might  we  not  expect  ? 
....  I  anticipate  the  era  of  reform  with  the  more  eagerness, 
and  picture  to  myself_>'^/^  the  barrier  between  violence  and 

renovation I   perceive  in    you   the   embryon    of  a 

mighty  intellect  which  may  one  day  enlighten  thousands. 
....  Come,  come  !  and  share  with  us  the  noblest 
success  or  the  most  glorious  martyrdom. 

The  chivalrous  campaign  that  was  intended  as 
a  prelude  to  the  conquest  of  the*  world,  and 
was  to  be  crowned  by  triumph  or  martyrdom, 
was  the  regeneration  of  Ireland. 


K   2 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

SHELLEY  AND  GODWIN — SHELLEY  IN  IRELAND^ 
IRISH   PAMPHLETS — 1 8 12. 

During  Shelley's  sojourn  in  the  Lake  country, 
he  had  entered  into  correspondence  with  a  man 
whose  name  had  long  been  illustrious  in  the 
political  and  literary  world  of  England.  This 
was  William  Godwin^  who  has  been  surnamed 
the  English  Rousseau. 

Godwin  was  born  in  1756,  and  was  in  his 
fifty-sixth  year  when  he  received  Shelley's  first 
letter.  Shelley  was  yet  in  the  cradle  when,  in 
1793,  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  Godwin  had 
written  the  work  that  was  destined  to  establish 
his  fame  as  a  philosopher  and  Republican. 
"Political  Justice"  is  a  work  as  cold  and  passion- 
less as  its  author,  and  for  that  very  reason  is  well 
adapted  to  attract  serious  and  contemplative 
minds.  Godwin  describes  in  its  pages  a  state 
of  society  from  which,  in  opposition  to  actual 
social  conditions,  the  oppression  and  injustice  of 
the  great,  the  foolishness  and  ignorance  of  the 
poor,  would  alike  be  banished  "  by  means  of  a 
just  and  even  distribution  of  the  good  things  of 
life  ;  a  state  of  society  in  which  every  member 
would  be  independent,  free  from  all  convention- 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  133 

alities,  without  exclusive  rights  or  privileges,  and 
amenable  only  to  the  pure  dictates  of  reason  and 
nature."  * 

This  great  work  effected  in  England  that 
which  Rousseau's  "  Contrat  Social  "  had  effected 
for  France.  All  the  youth  of  the  day  turned 
towards  the  new  apostle  of  modern  political 
philosophy.  Wordsworth,  Southey,  and  Cole- 
ridge acknowledged  Godwin  for  their  master. 
Shelley  is  to  inherit  their  enthusiasm,  and  one 
day  to  write  that  "he  only  really  thought  and  felt 
from  the  day  that  he  read  '  Political  Justice.'  " 

''  Caleb  Williams,"  a  novel  which  appeared 
a  year  later,  added  to  the  fame  and  popularity 
of  the  young  writer. 

But  the  private  life  of  Godwin,  who  was  as 
timid  and  reserved  in  practice  as  he  was  bold 
in  theory,  offered  a  complete  contrast  to  his 
doctrine. 

As  inimical  to  marriage  as  he  was  to  every 
other  social  convention,  and  a  celibate  by  nature, 
he  yet  was  twice  married.  His  first  wife  was  the 
celebrated  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  who  became  to 
Shelley  the  ideal  of  the  woman-philosopher  and 
woman-philanthropist  for  whom  he  sought  among 
his  female  friends,  and  whom  he  afterwards  por- 
trayed in  his  poems.  Between  Mary  and  the 
author  of  "Laon  and  Cythna"  there  was  more 
than  one  point  of  resemblance.  For,  like  him, 
belonging  to  a  wealthy  family,  she  was  deprived 
from  early  childhood,  through  the  misconduct  of 
her  father,  of  the  brilliant  future  that  should  have 
awaited  her,  and  had  learned  in  youth  to  bear 
her  part  in  the  hard  struggles  of  life.  She  had 
early  been  made  acquainted  with  the  vices  and 
follies  of  mankind,  and  she  had  ever  received  the 

*  No  one  in  France  has  more  truly  appreciated  "Political 
Justice"  than  Benjamin  Constant  in  his  "  iMdlanges  de 
Littérature  et  de  PoHtique." 


134    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

homage  due  to  her  sex  ;  she  had  worked  for  her 
bread  with  her  needle  ;  she  had  also  been  a 
school-teacher  in  a  London  suburb,  where  she 
wrote  her  first  work,  ''Thoughts  on  the  Education 
of  Girls  ;"*  she  had  afterwards  been  governess  in- 
Lady  Kingsborough's  family,  where  she  found 
time  for  a  thorough  study  of  French,  and  for 
writing  stories  and  tales;  finally  she  found  more 
lucrative  and  more  independent  work  in  placing 
her  pen  and  her  talents  at  the  service  of  Johnson, 
the  publisher.  This  clever  man  appreciated 
her  genius,  and  invited  her  every  Sunday 
to  his  table.  His  house  was  at  that  time 
the  meeting-place  of  all  the  boldest  and  most 
original  thinkers  of  the  day,  politicians,  artists,  and 
men  of  letters,  and  Mary  had  the  opportunity  of 
meeting  Thomas  Paine,  William  Blake,  who 
illustrated  some  of  her  books  for  children  in  his 
own  visionary  way,  the  brilliant  artist,  Henry 
Fuseli,  and  William  Godwin.  The  invectives  of 
the  latter  against  marriage  made  her  an  open 
partisan  of  the  theory  of  Free  Love — a  theory 
which  she  subsequently  put  in  practice.  She 
expounded  her  own  ideas  in  her  celebrated  book, 
"Thoughts  on  the  Education  of  Girls,^'  dedicated 
to  Talleyrand-Perigord.t  In  that  extraordinary 
work,  full  of  sensible  and  practical  ideas,  and 
of  delicate  and  profound  observation,  in  which 
the  women  of  the  present  day  might  find  much 
to  learn,  a  young  girl  for  the  first  time  laid  down 
principles  which  have  become  the  recognised 
basis  of  all  the  just  claims  of  her  sex. 

*  A  book  that  has  been  unduly  neglected.  It  is  superior, 
in  many  respects,  to  the  celebrated  work  of  Fénélon  on 
the  same  subject. 

t  Mary  had  read,  with  passionate  interest,  the  Bishop 
of  Autun's  pamphlet  on  "  L'Education  Nationale,"  and 
believed  in  the  writer's  sincerity. 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  135 

Many  of  her  notions  which  then  appeared 
premature  and  scandalous,  have  since  been 
practically  realised.  She  longed  to  obtain  for 
women  an  equal  degree  of  intellectual  develop- 
ment with  that  of  men,  she  claimed  for  them 
a  similar  education  ;  that  the  same  books  should 
be  placed  in  their  hands,  and  that  boys  and  girls 
should  be  brought  up  side  by  side  in  the  same 
schools. 

In  1792,  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  having  failed 
to  win  the  platonic  affections  of  the  cold-hearted 
Fuseli,  had  sought  consolation  in  a  journey  to 
France,  there  to  study  on  the  spot  that  marvellous 
revolution  whose  dawn  had  fired  her  enthusiastic 
spirit.  Probably  she  did  not  play  the  part 
attributed  by  Shelley  to  her,  under  the  name  of 
Cythna  in  "The  Revolt  of  Islam,"  for  in  her  quality 
of  foreigner,  she  would  be  an  object  of  suspicion  ; 
but  she  did  her  utmost,  and  in  company  with 
Thomas  Paine,  she  had  her  hour  of  triumph  in 
Paris.  The  "  Rights  of  Women  "  had  been 
translated  into  French,  and  received  with  acclama- 
tion by  the  Press.  The  book  was  sold  on  the 
Boulevards  together  with  the  "Droits  de  l'Homme." 
In  Paris  she  carried  her  theories  on  love  and 
marriage  into  practice,  and  falling  passionately 
in  love  with  an  American  adventurer  named 
Imlay,  she  bore  him  a  daughter  who  finds  a 
place  in  the  life  of  Shelley  under  the  name  of 
Fanny  Godwin.  Mary  received  a  terrible  blow 
by  the  desertion  of  Imlay;  she  endeavoured  to 
drown  herself  in  the  Thames,  but  was  rescued 
by  some  boatmen.  It  was  then  (1797)  that 
Godwin's  philosophical  affections  were  ,won  by 
the  courage  and  ill-fortune  of  this  interesting 
being  ;  he  offered  a  shelter,  to  use  his  own 
words,  "  to  the  wounded  heart,"  and  friendship 
melted  into  love.     Southey,  who  met  her  at  this 


136    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

period,   and    esteemed    her   highly,    describes    her 
in  the  following  words  : 

Of  all  the  lions  or  literati  I  have  seen  here,  Mary 
Imlay's  countenance  is  the  best,  infinitely  the  best.  The 
only  fault  in  it  is  an  expression  somewhat  similar  to  what 
the  prints  of  Home  Tooke  display — an  expression  indicating 
superiority  ;  not  haughtiness  nor  sarcasm  in  Mary  Imlay, 
but  still  it  is  unpleasant.  Her  eyes  are  light  brown,  and 
although  the  lid  of  one  of  them  is  affected  by  a  little 
paralysis,  tliey  are  the  most  meaning  1  ever  saw. 

Mary  Godwin,  the  child  of  Mary  WoUstone- 
craft  and  the  author  of  "  Political  Justice,"  was 
born  on  August  30th,  1797.  She  was  destined 
to  become  the  wife  of  Shelley,  and  was  herself 
a  writer  and  poetj  and  a  fit  daughter  of  her  whom 
she  thus  depicts  : 

Mary  WoUstonecraft  was  one  of  those  beings  who  appear 
but  once,  perhaps,  in  a  generation,  shedding  a  light  on 
humanity  which  neither  conflicting  opinions  nor  fortuitous 
circumstances  can  obscure. 

Godwin,  being  left  alone  with  two  children, 
endeavoured  to  tind  a  second  mother  for  them. 
He  addressed  himself  unsuccessfully,  to  a  friend 
of  Mary  WoUstonecraft,  the  widow  of  a  Mr. 
Reveley,  whom  we  shall  meet  with  again  as  Maria 
Gisborne,  under  which  name  she  was  lauded  and 
sung  by  Shelley.  In  December,  1801,  Godwin 
was  married  to  Mary  Jane  Clairmont,  a  widow 
with  two  children,  Jane,  better  known  as  Claire, 
Byron's  mistress,  then  about  four  or  five  years  old, 
and  Charles,  older  by  one  year. 

Godwin's  second  wife  was  intelligent  .and 
cultured,*  but  being  free  from  the  romantic  and 
philosophic  turn  of  his  first  wife,  she  somewhat 
effaced  from  his  remembrance  Mary  WoUstone- 
craft's  theories  on  the  education  of  girls.  But 
Mrs.  Clairmont's  practical  and  narrow  views  failed 

*   She  translated  several  French  story  books  for  children. 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  137 

to  stifle  in  the  youthful  Mary  those  geVins  of  fret 
and  independent  thought  which  she  had  inherited 
from  her  mother. 

The  three  little  girls  received  the  usual 
education  from  books  published  by  their  parents 
for  the  use  of  schools.  In  1805,  Godwin  opened 
a  Juvenile  Library  in  Skinner  Street.  His  star 
was  beginning  to  pale;  the  needy  bookseller  of 
181 1  lived  on  a  fame  that  might  be  called  posthu- 
mous ;  before  making  his  acquaintance,  Shelley 
had  supposed  him  to  be  dead. 

It  was  from  Southey  that  he  learned  the  fact 
of  Godwin's  existence  ;  and  yet  no  long  interval 
had  elapsed  since  Wordsworth,  writing  to  a  student 
of  law,  had  said  :  *'  Throw  away  your  books  of 
chemistry,  and  read  Godwin  on  '  Necessity  '  ;  he 
alone  is  immortal."  But  the  fate  of  Spenser's 
fairy  Duessa,  who  in  one  and  the  same  day  finds 
herself  a  young  girl  and  a  decrepit  old  woman, 
had  befallen  Godwin.  His  unparalleled  celebrity 
astounded  the  next  generation,  and  in  1827  his 
admirers  were  placed  m  an  embarrassing  dilemma  : 
**  Either  we  must  have  been  mad  then,  when  we 
allowed  the  high  morality  of  Mr.  Godwin  to  seduce 
us,  or  we  must  now  be  miserable  apostates,  torn 
hy  personal  interest,  from  the  sacred  cause  of 
truth."  * 

At  the  time  of  Shelley's  acquaintance  with 
him  (he  was  then  nearly  sixty),  he  was  an  old- 
looking  man,  short,  massive,  thick,  with  a  fine 
clear  complexion,  a  very  broad  bald  head  ;  simply 
dressed  in  an  old-fashioned  black  suit,  he  looked 
like  a  dissenting  minister  ! 

In  society  he  was  usually  reserved,  shy,  and  silent  ;  yet 
did  he  always  inspire  a  certain  interest.  Whatever  he  said 
when  he  chose  to  be  coiniiiunicative,  was  listened  to  with 


*  See  an  article  on  Godwin  in   The  British  Review  for 
June,  1 82;. 


138    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

attention,  and*  was  always  worih  hearing.  He  appeared  to 
myself  and  to  others  to  be  a  perpetual  coniradiction.  He 
was  at  once  pleasant  and  unpleasant,  agreeable  and  dis- 
agreeable ;  his  conversation  was  yielded  so  sparingly  that 
it  could  never  offend  by  excess,  or  seem  intrusive  ;  his 
speech  was  abrupt  and  curt,  but  every  remark  had  its  value, 

and  was  peculiar  and  chaiacterislic His  articulatioa 

was  indistinct  ;  his  utterance  was  not  easy,  but  impeded  by 
a  sort  of  effort,  or  catch,  sharp  and  dry. 

The  first  occasion  on  which  Shelley  is  mentioned 
in  Godwin's  Journal  is  under  the  date  January  6th, 
1812  :  ''  Wrote  to  Shelley.'"  This  was  in  reply  to 
the  letter  of  introduction  of  the  young  enthusiast  : 

Keswick,  Jamiary  ^rd,  1812. 

You  will  be  surprised  at  hearing  from  a  stranger.  No 
introduction  has,  nor  in  any  probability  ever  will,  authorise 
that  which  common  thinkers  would  call  a  liberty.  It  is, 
however,  a  liberty  which,  although  not  sanctioned  by 
custom,  is  so  far  from  being  reprobated  by  reason,  that 
the  dearest  interests  of  mankind  imperiously  demand  that 
a  certain  etiquette  of  fashion  should  no  longer  keep  "  man 
at  a  distance  from  man,"  or  impose  its  flimsy  fancies 
between  the  free  communications  of  intellect. 

The  name  of  Godwin  has  been  used  to  excite  in  me 
feelings  of  reverence  and  admiration.  I  have  been  ac- 
customed to  consider  him  a  luminary  too  dazzling  for  the 
darkness  which  surrounds  him.  From  the  earliest  period  ot 
my  knowledge  of  his  principles,  I  have  ardently  desired  to 
share  on  the  footing  of  intimacy  that  intellect  which  I  have 
delighted  to  contemplate  in  its  emanations.  Considering, 
then,  these  feelings,  you  will  not  be  surprised  at  the  incon- 
ceivable  emotions  with  which  I  learnt  your  existence  and 
your  dwelling.  I  had  enrolled  your  name  in  the  list  of  the 
honourable  dead.  I  had  felt  regret  that  the  glory  of  your 
being  had  passed  from  this  earth  of  ours.  It  is  not  so.  You 
still  live,  and  I  firmly  believe  are  still  planning  the  welfare 
of  human  kind.  I  have  but  just  entered  on  the  scene  ot 
human  operations,  yet  my  feelings  and  my  reasonings  cor- 
respond with  what  yours  were.  My  course  has  been  short 
but  eventful.  1  have  seen  much  of  human  prejudice, 
suffered  much  from  human  persecution,  yet  I  see  no  reason, 
hence  inferable,  which  should  alter  my  wishes  for  theii 
renovation.  The  ill-tieatment  I  have  met  with  has  more 
than   ever   impressed   the   truth   of   my  principles   on  my 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  139 

judgment.  I  am  young.  I  am  ardent  in  the  cause  of 
philanthropy  and  truth.  Do  not  suppose  that  this  is  vanity. 
I  am  not  conscious  that  it  inlhiences  this  portraiture.  I 
imngine  myself  dispassionately  describing  the  slate  of  my 
mind.  I  am  young  ;  you  have  gone  before  me,  I  doubt 
not  are  a  veteran  to  me  in  the  years  of  persecution.  Is  it 
strange  that,  defying  prejudice  as  I  have  done,  I  should 
outstep  the  limits  of  custom's  prescription,  and  endeavour 
to  make  my  desire  useful  by  a  friendship  with  William 
Godwin?  1  pray  you  to  answer  this  letter.  Imperfect  as 
may  be  my  capacity,  my  desire  is  ardent  and  unintermitted. 
Half-an-hour  would  be  at  least  humanely  employed  in  the 
experiment.  I  may  mistake  your  residence.  Certain  feel- 
ings, of  which  I  may  be  an  inadequate  arbiter,  may  induce 
you  to  desire  concealment.  I  may  not,  in  fine,  have  an 
answer  to  this  letter.  If  I  do  not,  when  I  come  to  London 
I  shall  seek  for  you.  I  am  convinced  I  could  represent 
myself  to  you  in  such  terms  as  not  to  be  thought  wholly 
unworthy  of  your  friendship.  At  least,  if  desire  for  universal 
happiness  has  any  claim  upon  your  preference,  that  desire  I 
can  exhibit.     Adieu.     I  shall  earnestly  await  your  answer. 

P.  B.  Shelley. 

Godwin's  reply  to  this  letter  has  been  lost. 
But  a  continuous  correspondence  was  bej^un  be- 
tween himself  and  Shelley,  in  the  course  of  which 
the  elderly  philosopher,  who,,  like  others,  had 
outlived  his  youthful  enthusiasm,  applied  himself 
to  moderate  the  impetuosity  and  impatience  of  his 
young  disciple,  and  to  restrain  his  irrepressible 
longing  to  reform  mankind.  Shelley  subrnitted 
with  docility  to  the  wisdom  of  the  author  of 
"  Political  Justice;  "  ho  promises  to  try  to  acquire 
that  soberness  of  spirit,  that  calmness  of  thouy[ht 
which,  he  says,  "  is  the  characteristic  of  true 
heroism."     He  quotes — 

Full  many  a  flower  is  born  to  blush  unseen, 
And  waste  its  sweetness  on  the  desert  air — 

and  hopes  he  will  not  outstep  the  boundaries  of 
the  '*  modesty  of  nature."  "  He  will  not  again 
crudely  obtrude  the  question  of  Atheism  on  the 
world/'  yet  he  is  desirous  not  to  sacrifice  all  things 


I40    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

to  the  feigned  humility  that  has  paralysed  so  much 
of  the  power  of  mankind  ;  he  cannot  resign  him- 
self to  quit  the  arena  he  entered  so  boldly,  to 
renounce  the  apostolate  of  the  true  and  good  : 

But  could  I  not  at  the  same  time  improve  my  own 
powers  and  diffuse  true  and  virtuous  principles  ?  Many, 
witli  equally  confined  talents  to  my  own,  are  by  publications 
scattering  the  seeds  of  prejudice  and  selfishness.  Might 
not  an  exhibition  of  truth,  with  equal  elegance  and  depth, 
suffice  to  counteract  the  deleterious  tendency  of  their 
principles  ? 

The  trial  of  strength  upon  which  he  is  eager  to 
enter,  and  of  which  he  speaks  with  extreme  reserve 
to  Godwin,  fearing  he  may  be  stopped  by  objections 
from  the  philosopher,  is  the  same  on  which  he 
dilates  with  great  openness  in  his  letters  to  Miss 
Kitchener:  the  emancipation  of  Ireland. 

Shelley  seems  to  have  felt  at  an  early  period,  a 
chivalrous  love  for  that  unhappy  country.  In  his 
novel  of  "  St.Irvyne'"'  he  personified  his  moral  ideal 
in  an  Irish  gentleman,  who,  to  charm  his  mistress, 
sings  to  her  the  patriotic  songs  of  his  native  land. 
And  in  1811  he  wrote  a  poem*  in  aid  of  Peter 
Finnerty,  a  brave  Irish  patriot,  who  was  then 
enduring  an  imprisonment  of  eighteen  months  for 

*  "  A  Poetical  Essay  on  the  Existing  State  of  Things.  By 
a  Gentleman  of  the  University  of  Oxford."  The  epigraph 
was  borrowed  from  Shelley's  favourite  poem,  "  The  Curse  of 
Kehama,"  by  Soutliey  : 

"And  Famine  at  her  bidding  wasted  wide 
The  wretched  land,  till,  in  the  public  way, 
Promiscuous  where  the  dead  and  dying  lay, 
Dogs  fed  on  human  bones  in  the  open  light  of  day." 

Strange  to  say,  this  poem,  which  was  formally  announced  in 
the  London  and  Oxford  newspapers,  and  which  brought,  it  is 
said,  ^100  to  poor  P'innerty,  is  not  to  be  found.  Mr.  Dowden 
ingeniously  conjectures  that  the  lost  poem  may  probably 
be  discovered  in  substance  in  those  portions  of  "  C2ueen 
Mab"  which  eloquently  depict  the  disorders  and  miserieg 
of  Shelley's  time. 


SHELLEY  AND  GODWIN.  \\i 

having  written  an  article  in  the  Morning  Chronich 
on  the  cruelties  practised  in  Ireland  under  the 
Government  of  Lord  Castlereagh. 

His  conversations  with  Southey  on  Irish 
questions  had  still  further  inflamed  his  desire  to 
devote  himself  to  the  cause  of  Ireland's  emancipa- 
tion, and  the  last  days  of  his  stay  at  Keswick  were 
spent  in  preparation  for  the  accomplishment  of  his 
design. 

Before  leaving  Cumberland  he  wrote  to  Godwin, 
January  28th,  1S12  : 

I  have  been  preparing  an  Address  to  the  Catholics  of 
Ireland,  which,  however  deficient  maybe  its  execution,  I  can 
by  no  means  admit  that  it  contains  one  sentiment  which  ca7i 
harm  the  cause  of  liberty  and  happiness.  It  consists  of  the 
benevolent  and  tolerant  deductions  of  philosophy  reduced 
into  the  simplest  1;  nguage,  and  such  as  those  who  by  the.t 
uneducated  poverty  are  most  susceptible  of  evil  impressions 
from  Catholicism,  may  clearly  comprehend.  1  know  it  can 
do  no  harm  ;  it  cannot  excite  rebellion,  as  its  main  principle 
is  to  trust  the  success  of  a  cause  to  the  energy  of  its  truth. 
It  cannot  "  widen  the  breach  between  the  kingdoms,"  as  it 
attempts  to  convey  to  the  vulgar  mind  sentiments  of  universal 
philanthropy  ;  and  whatever  impressions  it  may  produce, 
they  can  be  no  others  but  those  of  peace  and  harmony  ; 
it  owns  no  religion  but  benevolence,  no  cause  but  virtue,  no 
party  but  the  world.  I  shall  devote  myself  with  unremitting 
zeal,  as  far  as  an  uncertain  state  of  health  will  permit,  towaids 
forwarding  the  great  ends  of  virtue  and  happiness  in  Ireland, 
regarding,  as  I  do,  the  present  state  of  that  country's  affairs 
as  an  opportunity  which  if  I,  being  thus  disengaged,  permit 
to  pass  unoccupied,  I  am  unworthy  of  the  character  which  I 
have  assumed. 

The  Address  was  to  be  printed  in  Dublin  with 
his  poems,  and  was  to  be  affixed  to  the  walls  of 
the  city. 

When  on  the  point  of  embarking  at  Whitehaven 
prior  to  commencing  the  crusade,  and  all  aglow 
with  enthusiastic  hope,  he  writes  to  Miss  Hitchcner  : 

We  are  now  at  Whitehaven — a  miserable,  manufacturing 
sea-port  town.      I    write    to   you   a  short   letter  to  inform 


142     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

you  of  our  safety,  and  that  the  wind  which  will  fill 
the  sails  of  our  packet  to-night  is  favourable  and  fresh. 
Certainly  it  is  laden  with  some  of  your  benedictions,  ns 
with  the  breath  of  the  disembodied  virtues  who  smile  upon 
our  attempt.  We  set  off  to-night  at  twelve  o'clock,  and 
arrive  at  the  Isle  of  Man,  whence  you  will  hear  from  us 
to-morrow  ;  then  we  proceed,  when  the  wind  serves,  to 
Dublin.  We  may  be  detained  some  days  in  the  island  ;  if 
the  weather  is  fine  we  shall  not  regret  it  ;  at  all  events  we 
shall  escape  this  filthy  town  and  horrible  inn.  .  .  .  We  felt 
regret  at  leaving  Keswick.  I  passed  Southey's  house  without 
one  sting.  He  is  a  man  who  7nay  be  amiable  in  his  private 
character,  stained  and  false  as  is  his  public  one.  He 
may  be  amiable,  but  if  he  is,  my  feelings  are  liars,  and  I 
have  been  so  long  accustomed  to  trust  to  them  in  these 
cases,  that  the  opinion  of  the  world  is  not  the  likeliest 
corrector  to  impeach  their  credibility.  But  we  left  the  Calverts 
with  regret.  I  hope  some  day  to  show  you  Mrs,  Calvert  ; 
I  shall  not  forget  her,  but  will  preserve  her  memory  as 
another  flower  to  compose  a  garland  which  I  intend  to 
present  to  yoîi, 

Shelley,  accompanied  by  Harriet  and  Eliza, 
sailed  from  Whitehaven  on  February  3rd,  remained 
for  a  few  days  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  and  after 
twenty-eight  hours  of  rough  sea,  reached  Dublin 
in  the  night  of  February  12th,  181 2. 

Immediately  on  landing  he  wrote  to  Miss 
Kitchener  : 


....  At  length,  however,  you  are  free  from  anxiety  for 
our  safety,  as  het-e  we  have  nothing  to  apprehend  but 
Government,  which  will  not,  assure  yourself,  dare  to  be  so 
barefacedly  oppressive  as  to  attack  my  Address;  it  will 
bre  ithe  the  spirit  of  peace,  toleration,  and  patience  ;  .  .  . 
as  my  name,  which  will  be  prefixed  to  the  Address^  will 
show  that  my  deeds  are  not  deeds  of  darkness,  nor  my 
counsels  things  of  mystery  and  fear.  .  .  .  Dread  nothing 
for  me  ;  the  course  of  my  conduct  in  Ireland  (as  shall  the 
entire  course  of  my  life)  shall  be  marked  by  openness  and 
sincerity.  .  .  The  ocean  rolls  between  us.  O  thou  ocean 
whose  multitudinous  billows  ever  wash  Erin's  green  isle,  on 
whose  shores  this  venturous  arm  would  plant  the  flag  of 
liberty,  roll  on  ! 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  143 

TO    IRELAND. 

Bear  witness,  Erin  !  when  thine  injured  isle 
Sees  summer  on  its  verdant  pastures  smile, 
Its  cornfields  waving  in  the  winds  that  sweep 
The  billowy  surface  of  thy  circling  deep. 
Thou  tree  whose  shadow  o'er  the  Atlantic  gave 
Peace,  wealth,  and  beauty,  to  its  friendly  wave, 

....  its  blossoms  fade, 
And  blighted  are  the  leaves  that  cast  its  shade  ; 
Whilst  the  cold  hand  gathers  its  scanty  fruit. 
Whose  chiUness  struck  a  canker  to  its  root. 

Oil  arriving  in  Dublin,  one  of  Shelley's  first 
steps  was  to  call  at  Curran's  house  in  order  to 
present  to  the  great  Jawyer  and  patriot  a  letter  of 
introduction  given  him  by  Godwin.  Shelley  had 
been  deeply  interested  by  his  speeches  even  before 
he  purposed  to  visit  Ireland  ;  he  knewCurran  to  have 
been  bravely  devoted  to  the  cause  of  the  victims 
of  the  Rebellion.  Curran,  however,  was  not  very 
eager  to  make  his  acquaintance.  Shelley  called 
twice  at  his  house  without  finding  him.  His 
political  pamphlets  were  not  of  a  nature  to 
impress  Curran  favourably.  The  former  friend  of 
Robert  Emmet,  the  eloquent  advocate  of  Rowan 
and  Wolfe  Tone,  the  author  of  the  celebrated 
speech  on  the  state  of  Ireland,  delivered  in  the 
Dublin  House  of  Parliament  in  1794,  had  become 
more  moderate  in  his  views  since  he  had  accepted 
the  office  of  Master  of  the  Rolls,  which  enforced  a 
certain  reserve  and  a  prudent  circumspection  with 
regard  to  revolutionary  agitators. 

Shelley  was  eager  to  begin  the  campaign, 
and  lost  no  time  in  putting  his  "Address  to  the 
Irish  People  '-"  in  the  hands  of  the  printers.* 

*  Hogg,  who  never  forgets  to  mention  his  enemy  Eliza, 
tells  us  that  while  the  Address  was  in  the  press,  tiie  Guardian 
Angel  did  her  best  for  the  regeneration  of  Ireland  by  collect- 
ing "useful  passages"  for  publication  from  the  work$  of 


144    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Twelve  days  after  his  arrival,  the  "Address 
to  the  Irish  People,  by  P.  B.  Shelley,  price  5(/.," 
was  published  in  an  edition  of  fifteen  hundred 
copies. 

It  had  been  rapidly  written  in  a  popular  style, 
and  was  somewhat  immature,  but  it  contained 
passages  sparkling  with  enthusiasm  and  patriotism, 
and  breathed  throughout  such  sincere  and  warm 
feelings  of  humanity  and  fraternity,  as  could  not 
fail  to  reach  the  heart  of  the  people.  While 
putting  forward  the  claims  on  which  all  the 
Revolutionary  Committees  were  agreed,  viz.. 
Catholic  Emancipation  and  the  Repeal  of  the 
Union,  Shelley  went  far  beyond  these. 

He  pleaded  the  cause  of  all  the  great  thoughts 
that  had  hitherto  found  a  home  in  his  soul,  and 
which  now  rushed  burning  from  his  pen  in  words 
that  were  clear,  simple,  spirited,  and  highly 
coloured,  but  that  were  always  noble,  and  fre- 
quently poetical.  It  was  difficult  to  remain 
unmoved  by  the  earnestness  and  sincerity  with 
which  the  young  enthusiast  preached  liberty  of 
conscience,  political  tolerance,  religious  equality 
in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  horror  of  persecution  and 
of  fanaticism,  and  universal  love  and  charity, 
"that  great  principle  of  the  gospel  of  Christ." 
Wheresoever  human  nature  was  allowed  its  natural 
sway,  those  human  accents  of  Shelley  must  have 
found  an  echo. 

The  more  thought  there  is  in  the  world,  the  more 
happiness    and    liberty  will    there   be.  .  .  .  Oh,  Irishmen  ! 


Tom  Paine.  As  for  Harriet,  she  was  a  warm  convert  to  the 
cause  of  Ireland.  "I  am  Irish,"  she  had  written  to  Miss 
Kitchener  when  about  to  C[uit  Keswick,  "...  I  have 
done  with  the  En^rJish.  I  liave  witnessed  too  much  of  John 
Bull,  and  I  am  ashamed  of  him.  ...  I  will  claim  kindred 
Aviili  those  brave  sons  of  the  ocean,  and  when  I  am  deceived 
in  them  it  will  be  enough." 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  145 

I  am  interested  in  your  cause  ;  and  it  is  not  because  you  are 
Irishmen  or  Roman  Catholics  that  I  feel  with  you  and  feel 
for  you,  but  because  you  are  men  and  sufferers.  Were 
Ireland  at  this  time  peopled  with  Brahmins,  this  very  same 
Address  would  have  been  suggested  by  the  same  state  of 
mind. 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  to  the 
Catholics  of  Ireland  this  was  precisely  the  weak 
point  in  his  reasoning.  Freedom  of  thought, 
in  which  he  believed  all  strength  consisted,  was 
just  what  told  against  his  philanthropic  crusade. 
The  history  of  the  ancient  Catholic  religion  as 
traced  by  him  after  the  manner  of  Voltaire  and 
the  Encyclopaedists,  could  scarcely  be  to  the  taste 
of  Irish  Catholics  ;  they  could  hardly  respond 
with  enthusiasm  to  the  invitation  of  the  young 
tribune  to  be  on  their  guard  against  falling  under 
the  yoke  of  the  priests,  "  those  mild-faced  and 
beardless  impostors,^'  who  speak  of  liberty,  and 
only  wish  for  slaves.  He  little  understood 
Catholics,  who  tried  to  convert  them  to  a  worship 
"'  without  priests,  altars,  confessionals,  processions, 
or  miracles,"  to  that  interior  worship  taught  by 
Socrates,  "the  only  worship  that  should  be  dear 
to  a  good  man,  the  worship  of  pure  heart-felt 
affection,  the  piety  that  is  displayed  by  good 
actions."  Yet  every  Irishman  must  have  felt 
proud,  and  at  the  same  time  enthusiastically 
hopeful,  when  Shelley  poured  forth  these  pathetic 
words  : 

Oh!  Ireland,  thou  emerald  of  the  ocean,  whose  sons 
are  generous  and  brave,  whose  daughters  are  honourable, 
and  frank,  and  fair  ;  thou  art  the  isle  on  whose  green  shores 
I  have  desired  to  see  the  standard  of  liberty  erected,  a  flag 
of  fire,  a  beacon  at  which  the  world  shall  light  the  torch 
of  Freedom!  .  .  .  Adieu,  my  friends  !  May  every  sun  that 
shines  on  your  giecn  island  see  the  annihilation  of  an  abuse, 
and  the  birth  of  an  embryon  of  melioration  !  Your  own 
hearts — may  they  become  the  shrines  of  purity  and  freedom, 
and  never  may  smoke  to  the  Mammon  of  unrighteousness 
ascend  from  the  unpolluted  altar  of  their  devotion  ! 

L 


146     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

» 
As  for  the  means  of  attaining  Catholic 
Emancipation  and  Repeal  of  the  Union,  Shelley 
was  the  declared  enemy  of  violent  or  cowardly 
measures.  He  quoted  as  an  example  the  French 
Revolution,  which  had  been  a  terrible  failure 
for  the  people,  because  it  had  made  use  of 
violence  and  falsehood. 

"My  warm-hearted  friends,"  he  exclaims  with  blunt 
freedom,  "  who  meet  together  to  talk  of  the  distresses  of 
your  countrymen,  until  social  chat  induces  you  to  drink 
rather  freely  ;  as  ye  have  felt  passionately,  so  reason  coolly. 
Nothing  hasty  can  be  lasting  ;  lay  up  the  mon--  with  which 
you  usually  purchase  drunkenness  and  ill-heaii.,,  to  relieve 
the  pa'.ns  of  your  felloAv-sufiferers.  Let  your  children  lisp  of 
Freedom  in  the  cradle— let  your  death-bed  be  the  school  for 
fresh  exertions— let  every  street  of  the  city,  and  field  of  the 
country,  be  connected  with  thoughts  which  liberty  has 
made  holy.  Be  warm  in  your  cause,  yet  rational,  and 
charitable,  and  tolerant— never  let  the  oppressor  grind  you 
into  justifying  his  conduct  by  imitating  his  meanness. 

He  would  fain  inspire  the  Irish  with  his  own. 
hopefulness,  based  on  the  friendly  dispositions 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  afterwards  George  IV.  : 

That  great  and  good  man,  Charles  Fox,  who  was  your 
friend,  and  the  friend  of  Freedom,  was  the  friend  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales.  The  Piince  was  the  better  for  his  in- 
structive conveisation.  He  saw  the  truth,  and  he  believed 
it.     But  will  he  redress  your  wrongs  ? 

Shelley  can  feel  no  certainty  of  this,  and 
his  prophetic  soul  casts  a  glance  on  the  future 
of  that  weak  and  unworthy  Prince  : 

I  know  not  what  to  say  ;  his  staff  is  gone  and  he  leans 
upon  a  broken  reed  ;  his  present  advisers  are  not  like 
Charles  Fox,  they  do  not  plan  for  liberty  and  safety,  not  for 
the  happiness,  but  for  the  glory  of  their  country  ;  and  what. 
Irishmen,  is  the  glory  of  a  country  divided  from  their 
happiness  ?  It  is  a  false  light  hung  out  by  the  enemies  of 
Freedom  to  lure  the  unthinking  into  their  net.  Men  like 
these  surround  the  Prince,  and  whether  or  no  he  has  really 


SHELLEY  AND  GODWIN.  147 

promised  to  emancipate  you,  whether  or  no  he  will  consider 
the  promise  of  a  Prince  of  Wales  binding  to  a  King  of 
England,  is  yet  a  matter  of  doubt.  We  cannot  at  least  be 
quite  certain  ot  it  ;  on  this  you  cannot  certainly  rely.  .  .  . 
Mildness,  sobriety,  and  reason  are  the  effectual  methods  of 
forwarding  the  ends  of  liberty  and  happiness.  .  .  .  O 
Irishmen,  rkform  YOURSELVES  !  Your  reform  must  begin 
at  your  own  firesides. 

The  reform  of  Ireland  was  in  Shelley's  eyes 
but  the  first  step  towards  the  thorough  emancipa- 
tion of  the  human  race,  and  the  realisation  of 
the  Millennium  of  "Political  Justice" — that  uni- 
versal reign  of  reason  and  love.  We  now,  for 
the  first  time,  find  the  poet's  favourite  theme  of 
a  social  Palingenesis  by  the  final  triumph  of 
virtue  developed  at  some  length;  he  was  soon 
to  give  it  poetical  form  in  "  Queen  Mab,"  and 
at  last  to  invest  it  with  supreme  beauty  in 
"  Prometheus  Unbound." 

The  Address  concluded  with  these  words  of 
Lafayette,  whose  name  is  "  endeared,  by  its 
peerless  bearer^  to  every  lover  of  the  human 
race  "  ; 

For  a  nation  to  love  liberty  it  is  sufficient  that  she 
knows  it,  to  be  free  it  is  sufficient  that  she  wills  it. 

Shelley  forwarded  copies  of  his  pamphlet  to 
all  his  friends,  including  the  great  William 
Godwin,  and  he  was  anxious  to  justify  himself 
in  the  eyes  of  his  austere  and  timorous  Mentor 
for  the  youthful  eagerness  with  which  he  had 
published  his  thoughts.  He  writes  to  him  under 
the  date  of  February  24th  : 

I  hop-j  ihat  the  motives  which  induce  me  to  publish  thus 
early  in  life  do  not  arise  fiom  any  desire  of  dibtmguishing 
mysflf  any  more  than  is  consistent  with  and  subordinate 
to  usefulness.  ...  I  therefore  write  and  I  publii^h,  because 
I  will  publish  nothing  that  shall  not  conduce  to  virtue,  and 
therefore  my  publicaiions,  so  far  as  they  do  influence,  shall 
influence   to   good.     My  views   of  society   and   my   hopes 

L    2 


B48    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

of  it,  meet  with  congenial  ones  in  few  breasts.  But  virtue 
and  truth  are  congenial  to  many.  I  will  employ  no  means 
but  these  for  my  object,  and  however  visionary  some  may 
regard  the  ultimatum  that  I  propose,  if  they  act  virtuously 
they  will,  equally  with  myself,  forward  its  accomplishment  ; 
and  my  publications  will  present  to  the  moralist  and  the 
metaphysician  a  picture  of  a  mind,  however  juvenile  and 
unformed,  which  had  at  the  dawn  of  its  knowledge  taken  a 
singular  turn  ;  and  to  leave  out  the  early  lineaments  of  its 
appearance  would  be  to  efface  those  which  the  attrition 
of  the  world  had  not  deprived  of  right-angled  originality. 

In  order  to  gain  some  idea  of  Shelley's 
activity  during  his  demagogic  and  humanitarian 
fever^  it  is  necessary  to  read  his  letters  to  Miss 
Kitchener.  In  these  there  is  none  of  the  sobriety 
with  which  he  addresses  Godwin  ;  he  allows  full 
play  to  the  illusions  of  his  revolutionary  zeal  : 

Lower  Sackville  Street,  February  27th,  1812. 

I  have  already  sent  four  hundred  of  my  little  pamphlets 
into  the  world,  and  they  have  excited  a  sensation  of  wonder 
in  Dublin  ;  eleven  hundred  yet  remain  for  distribution. 
Copies  have  been  sent  to  sixty  public  houses.  No  prosecu- 
tion is  yet  attempted  ;  I  do  not  see  how  it  can  be.  Con- 
gratulate me,  my  friend,  for  everything  proceeds  well. 
I  could  not  expect  more  rapid  success.  The  persons  with 
whom  1  have  got  acquainted  approve  of  my  principles.  .  .  . 
I  do  not  doubt  your  ardent  desire  to  "  share  with  me 
the  high  delight  of  awaking  a  noble  nation  from  the  lethargy 
of  its  bondage."  .  .  . 

Expectation  is  on  the  tiptoe.  I  send  a  man  out  every 
day  to  distribute  copies,  with  instructions  how  and  where  to 
give  them.  ...  I  stand  at  the  balcony  of  our  window  and 
watch  till  I  see  a  man  who  looks  likely;  I  throw  a  book  to 
him.  On  Monday  my  next  book  makes  its  appearance. 
This  is  addressed  to  a  different  class,  recommending  and 
proposing  associations.  I  have  in  my  mind  a  plan  for 
proselytising  the  young  men  at  Dublin  College.  Those  who 
are  not  entirely  given  up  to  the  grossness  of  dissipation 
are  perhaps  reclaimable.  ,  .  .  Whilst  you  are  with  us  in 
Wales,  I  shall  attempt  to  organise  [a  philanthropic  associa- 
tion] there  which  will  co-operate  with  the  Dublin  one. 
Might  I  not  extend  them  all  over  England,  and  quietly 
i^evolutionise  the  country  ?  .  .  . 

My   youth   is   much   against  me    here.      Strange    that 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  149 

truth  should  not  be  judged  by  its  inherent  excellence, 
independent  of  any  reference  to  the  utterer.  ...  I  have  not 
yet  seen  Curran.  ...  I  do  not  like  him  for  accepting  the 
office  of  "  Master"  [of  the  Rolls].  O'Connor,  brother  to  the 
rebel  Arthur,  is  here.  [I  have]  written  to  him.  ...  I  am 
resolved.  Good  principles  are  scarce  here.  The  public 
papers  are  either  Oppositionists  or  Ministerial.  One  is 
as  contemptible  and  narrow  as  the  other.  I  wish  I  could 
change  tins.  I  am  of  course  hated  by  both  of  those 
parties.  The  remnant  of  united  Irishmen  whose  wrongs 
make  them  hate  England,  I  have  more  hope  of.  I  have  met 
with  no  determined  Republicans,  but  have  found  some  who 
are  democratz/^a^/^'. 

Shelley  had  forwarded  a  copy  of  his  pamphlet 
to  Godwin,  and  great  must  have  been  the  shock 
to  his  ardent  proselytising  zeal  when  he  received 
the  philosopher's  reply.  Never  did  a  more 
glacial  stream  fall  on  more  burning,  fevered 
pulses.  We  can  picture  to  ourselves  the 
disappointment  of  the  fervent  apostle  who 
believed  himself  about  to  revolutionise  England, 
on  reading  the  following  lines,  full  as  they 
are  of  common  sense  and  prudent  reserve  : 

March  ^Ûi,  1S12. 

In  your  last  letter  you  say  :  "  I  publish,  because  I  will 
publish  nothing  that  shall  not  conduce  to  virtue  ;  and  there- 
fore my  publications,  so  far  as  they  do  influence,  shall 
influence  to  good." 

Oh,  my  friend,  how  short-sighted  are  the  views  which 
dictated  this  sentence  !  Every  man  in  every  deliberate 
action  of  his  life  imagines  he  sees  a  preponderance  of  good 
likely  to  result.  This  is  the  law  of  our  nature  from  which 
none  of  us  can  escape.  You  do  not  on  this  point  generically 
differ  from  the  human  beings  about  you.  Mr.  Burke  and 
Tom  Paine,  when  they  wrote  on  the  French  Revolution, 
perhaps  equally  believed  that  the  sentiments  they  supported 
were  essentially  conducive  to  the  welfare  of  man.  .  .  . 

In  the  pamphlet  you  have  just  sent  me,  ycur  views  and 
mine,  as  to  the  improvement  of  mankind,  are  decisively  at 
issue.  You  profess  the  immediate  object  of  your  efforts  to 
be  "  the  organisation  of  a  society,  whose  institution  shaU 
serve  as  a  bond  to  its  members."  If  I  maybe  allowed  to 
understand  my  book  on  "Political  Justice,"  its  pervading 


150    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

principle  is,  that  association  is  a  most  ill-chosen  and  ill- 
qualified  mode  of  endeavouring  to  promote  the  political 
happiness  of  mankind  And  I  think  of  your  pam^jhlet, 
however  commendable  and  lovely  are  many  of  the  senti- 
ments it  conains,  that  it  will  be  either  inenfective  to  its  im- 
mediate object,  or  that  it  has  no  very  remote  tendency  to 
light  again  the  flames  of  rebellion  and  war.     .     .     . 

DibCUïSion,  reading,  inquiry,  perpetual  communication, 
these  are  my  favouriie  methods  for  the  improvement  of 
mankind  ;  but  associations,  organised  societies,  I  firmly 
condemn. 

You  may  as  well  tell  the  adder  not  to  sting  ; 
You  may  as  well  use  question  with  the  wolf; 
You  may  as  well  forbid  the  mountain  pines 
To  wag  their  high  tops,  and  to  make  no  noise 
When  they  are  iretted  with  the  gusts  of  Heaven, 

as  tell  organised  societies  of  men,  associated  to  obtain  their 
rights  and  to  extinguish  oppression,  prompted  by  a  deep 
aversion  to  inequality,  luxury,  enormous  taxes,  and  the 
evils  of  war,  to  be  innocent,  to  employ  no  violence,  and 
calmly  to  await  the  progress  of  truth.  I  never  was  at  a 
public  political  dinner,  a  scene  that  I  have  not  now  witnessed 
for  many  years,  that  1  did  not  see  how  the  enthusiasm  was 
lighted  up,  how  the  flame  caught  from  man  to  man,  how 
fast  the  dictates  of  sober  reason  were  obliterated  by  the 
gusts  of  passion,  and  how  near  the  assembly  was,  like 
Alexander's  compotators  at  Persepolis,  to  go  forth  and  fire 
the  city  ;  or  like  the  auditors  of  Anthony's  oration  over  the 
body  of  CîEsar,  to  apply  a  flaming  brand  to  the  mansion  of 
each  several  conspirator.  .  .  . 

One  principle  that  I  believe  is  wanting  in  you,  and  all 
our  too  fervent  and  impetuous  reformers,  is  the  thought  that 
almost  every  institution  or  form  of  society  is  good  in  its 
place,  and  in  the  period  of  time  to  which  it  belongs.  How 
many  beautiful  and  admirable  effects  grew  out  of  Popery 
and  the  monastic  institutions  in  the  period  when  they  were 
in  their  genuine  health  and  vigour  !  To  them  we  owe 
almost  all  our  logic  and  our  literature.  What  excellent 
effects  do  we  reap,  even  at  this  day,  from  the  feudal  system 
and  from  chivalry!  In  this  point  of  view,  nothing  can 
perhaps  be  more  worthy  of  our  applause  than  the  English 
Constitution. 

The  last  remark  must  have  been  peculiarly 
distasteful  to  Shelley,  who  in  his  second  pamphlet, 
''  Proposals  for  an  Association  of  Philanthropists," 


SHELLEY  AND  GODWIN.  151 

'had  expounded  somewhat  crudely  his  theories 
on  politics,  and  launched  into  violent  abuse  of 
the  English  Constitution.  Starting  from  the 
principle  that  there  can  be  no  lawful  Constitution 
except  that  made  by  the  people  for  their  own 
benefit,  he  proceeded  to  show  that  neither  the 
Great  Charter  nor  the  Bill  of  Rights,  the  origin 
of  which  is  held  up  to  us  as  equally  sacred, 
mysterious,  and  awful  as  the  law  of  nature,  had 
any  right  to  the  title  of  Constitution. 

The  speeches  of  kings  .  .  .  the  writings  of  courtiers,  and 
the  journals  of  Parliament,  which  teem  with  its  glorv,  are 
full  of  political  cant,  exhibit  the  skeleton  of  national 
freedom,  and  are  fruitless  attempts  to  hide  evils  in  whose 
favour  they  cannot  prove  an  alibi.  .  .  .  The  songs  of"  Rule 
Britannia "  and  " God  Save  the  King"  are  but  abstracts  of 
the  caterpillar  creed  of  courtiers,  cut  down  to  the  taste  and 
comprehension  of  a  mob  ;  the  one  to  disguise  to  an  alehouse 
politician  the  evils  of  that  devilish  practice  of  war,  and  the 
other  to  inspire  among  clubs  of  all  descriptions  a  certain 
feeling  which  some  call  loyalty  and  others  servility. 

The  morning  of  Friday,  February  28th,  18 12, 
was  a  morning  of  excitement  for  the  Sackville 
Street  trio.  On  that  day  a  meeting  of  the  friends 
of  Catholic  Emancipation,  under  the  presidency 
of  Lord  Fingall,  was  held  in  Fishamble  Street 
Theatre,  and  Shelley  was  to  make  a  speech. 
Women  were  present  at  such  meetings;  indeed, 
they  formed  a  chief  attraction.  The  English 
police  had  sent  over  detective  officers  to  report 
the  proceedings.*  We  do  not  possess  the  exact 
words  of  Shelley's  speech,  which  unluckily  was 
immediately  preceded  by  a  masterly  discourse 
from  O'Connell,  but  he  tells  us  that  he  spoke 
for  more  than  an  hour,t  and  we  can  form  a  good 

*  Of  the  two  reports  in  existence,  one  does  not  mention 
Shelley,  the  other,  giving  a  list  of  the  speakers,  names  a 
certain  Shelley,  "  who  gives  himself  out  as  a  born  English- 
man." 

t  Mr.  Jeaffreson  considers  that  Shelley's  speech  lasted 


152     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

idea  of  it  from  extracts  given  by  the  Dublin 
newspapers,  and  in  particular  by  the  account  in 
the  Evening  Post  of  February  29th  : 

Mr.  Shelley  asked  for  a  hearing.  He  was  an  English- 
man, and  when  he  reflected  on  the  crimes  committed  by  his 
nation  on  Ireland  he  could  not  but  blush  for  his  countrymen, 
did  he  not  know  that  arbitrary  power  never  failed  to  corrupt 
the  heart  of  man.  (Loud  and  prolonged  cheering.)  He  had 
come  to  Ireland  for  the  sole  purpose  of  interesting  himself 
in  the  fortunes  of  the  country,  and  impressed  with  a  full  con- 
viction of  the  necessity  of  Catholic  Emancipation,  and  of  the 
baneful  effects  which  the  union  with  Great  Britain  had 
entailed  upon  Ireland.  He  had  walked  through  the  fields  of 
the  country  and  the  streets  of  the  city  .  .  .  and  had  seen 
that  edifice  which  ought  to  have  been  the  fane  of  their 
liberties  converted  into  a  temple  of  Mammon.*  (Thunders 
of  applause.)  He  beheld  beggary  and  famine  in  thecountry, 
and  he  could  lay  his  hand  on  his  heart  and  say  that  the 
cause  of  such  sights  was  the  union  with  Great  Britain. 
(Hear,  hear  !)  He  was  resolved  to  do  his  utmost  to  promote 
a  repeal  of  the  Union.  Catholic  Emancipation  would  do  a 
great  deal  towards  the  amelioration  of  the  condition  of 
the  people,  but  he  was  convinced  that  the  repeal  of  the 
Union  was  of  more  importance.  He  considered  that  the 
victims  whose  members  were  vibrating  on  gibbets  were 
driven  to  the  commission  of  the  crimes  which  they  expiated 
by  their  lives,  by  the  effects  of  the  Union.  .  .  . 

He  could  not  imagine  that  the  religious  opinions  of  a- 
man  should  exclude  him  from  the  rights  of  society.  The 
original  founder  of  their  religion  taught  no  such  doctrine. 
Equality  in  this  respect  was  general  in  the  American  States,. 
and  why  not  here  ?  Did  a  change  of  place  change  the 
nature  of  man  ?  He  would  beg  those  in  power  to  recollect 
the  French  Revolution  ;  the  suddenness,  the  violence  with 
which  it  burst  forth,  and  the  causes  which  gave  rise  to  it.. 
He  ended  by  expressing  a  hope  that  many  years  would  not 
piss  over  his  head  before  he  had  made  himself  conspicuous 
at  least  by  his  zeal  on  behalf  of  Emancipation  and  Repeal. 

We    learn    from    Shelley   himself,   that   when. 
he  spoke  of  his  doctrine  of  religious  free-thought, 

not  longer  than  ten  minutes.     What  an  admirable  judge  of 
time  is  Mr.  Jeaffreson  ! 

*  The  Houses  of  Parliament  converted  into  the  Bank  of 
Ireland. 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  153 

his  words  were  received  with  disapprobation  and 
hisses.  He  must  have  been  very  ignorant  of 
Irish  politics,  or  very  anxious  to  expound  his 
dearest  principles,  to  venture  on  asking  a  meeting 
of  Irishmen  for  equal  rights  for  the  Protestant 
minority  and  the  Catholic  majority.  He  would 
not  have  committed  such  an  error  a  few  years 
later.  He  had  learned  from  reflection,  that  the 
art  of  persuasion  is  not  the  same  as  the  art  of 
reasoning,  and  that  concessions  must  be  made, 
artifice  used,  and  even  a  certain  amount  of  legiti- 
mate cunning  employed  when  we  would  rule  by 
eloquence.  He  appeals  to  the  conduct  of  Christ 
himself,  who,  when  preaching  the  abrogation  of 
the  Old  Law,  said  to  the  Jews  :  "  Think  not  I 
am  come  to  destroy  the  Law  and  the  prophets  ; 
I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil."* 

Shelley's  discourse,  however,  must  have  made 
a  powerful  impression  on  his  audience,  coming 
as  it  did  from  the  lips  of  a  youth  (who  at  that 
time  looked  about  fifteen),  and  uttered  with  the 
same  warmth  and  conviction  that  inspire  the 
Irish  pamphlets  of  which  the  speech  was  only  an 
abridgment.  In  the  Weekly  Messenger  of  March 
7th,  there  appeared  a  long  article  in  honour  of 
the  youthful  tribune,  of  "the  bold  and  fearless 
advocate  of  good-will,  the  missionary  of  truth," 
who  had  courageously  put  his  finger  on  the 
political  wounds  of  Ireland,  and  had  proclaimed 
the  true  principles  of  Christianity. 

The  writer  of  the  article  was  Mr.  Lawless, 
an  ardent  partisan  of  Emancipation,  known  in 
Dublin  as  "honest  Jack  Lawless,"  and  at  that 
time    engaged    on    a    hiscory   of    Ireland.       His 

*  There  is  a  remnrkabie  passage  in  the  Essay  on 
Christianity,  wherein  bhelley  criticises  admirably  his  own 
juvenile  rhetoric  when  he  spoke  in  Dublin.  More  than  one 
point  of  likeness  maybe  found  in  Shelley's  "Essay,"  and 
the  "Vie  de  Jésus"  by  M.  Renan. 


154    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  TILE  POET. 

character,  his  Repubh'can  proclivities,  his  project 
of  a  history,  made  him  interesting  to  Shelley, 
who,  believing  that  such  a  work  would  be  an 
efficacious  means  of  instructing  the  Irish  public 
on  the  righteousness  of  their  claims,  determined 
to  contribute  to  that  end  with  his  purse,  if  not 
his  pen,  and  asked  Mr.  Medwin  to  raise  two 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds  for  the  purpose  of 
furthering  the  undertaking.* 

Shelley  soon  discovered  that  in  order  to 
please  Irish  Catholics,  it  was  necessary  to  share 
their  prejudices,  their  dislikes,  and  their 
intolerance  ;  that  his  great  philosophical  principles 
were  mistrusted  by  the  leaders,  and  that  the 
Irish  people  were  in  no  mood  to  undertake  a 
chivalrous  crusade  for  the  benefit  of  humanity 
in  general. t 

Yet  although  the  Irish  people,  as  he  began 
to  know  them  better,  appeared  to  him  more 
distressed  and  less  deserving  of  pity,  his  heart 
bled  at  the  idea  of  deserting  them  in  their 
misery  and  of  renouncing  all  efforts  to  better 
their  condition. 

"  Can  they  be  in  a  worse  state  than  at  present  ?"  he  wrote 
to  Godwin,  endeavouring  to  refute  the  arguments  of  the 
latter  against  association.  "Intemperance  and  hard  labour 
have  reduced  them  to  machines.  '1  he  oyster  that  is  washed 
and  driven  at  the  mercy  of  the  tides,  appears  to  me  an 
animal  of  aUnost  equal  elevation  in  the  scale  of  intellectual 
being.     Is  it  impossible  to  awaken  a  moral  sense   in   the 


*  The  result  of  the  joint  effort  was  the  appearance,  in 
1814,  of  "A  Compendium  of  the  History  of  1 1  eland  down  to 
the  Reign  of  George  1."  According  to  Mr.  Rossetti,  some  pas- 
sages in  the  work  are  from  Shelley's  pen,  but  Mr.  Dowden  is 
of  opinion  that  the  portion  really  written  by  Shelley  was 
never  printed. 

t  "  I  do  not  like  Lord  Fingall,"  wrote  Shelley,  "or  any 
of  the  Catholic  aristocracy.  Their  intolerance  can  be 
equalled  by  nothing  but  the  hardy  wickedness  and  falsehood 
of  the  Prince.     My  speech  was  misinterpreted.      .  ." 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  155 

breasts  of  those  who  appear  so  unfitted  for  the  high  destina- 
tion of  their  nature?  ...  I  had  no  conception  of  the 
depth  of  human  misery  until  now.  The  poor  of  Dublin  are 
assuredly  the  meanest  and  most  miserable  of  all.  In  their 
narrow  streets  thousands  seem  huddled  together — one  mass 
of  animated  filth.  With  what  eagerness  do  such  scenes  as 
these  inspire  me  !  How  self-conhdent,  too,  do  I  (eel  in  my 
assumption  to  teach  the  lessons  of  virtue  to  those  who 
grind  their  fellow  beings  into  worse  than  annihilation. 
These  were  the  persons,  to  whom  in  my  fancy  I  had 
addressed  myself;  how  quickly  were  my  views  on  this 
subject  changed  ;  yet  how  deeply  has  this  very  change 
rooted  the  conviction  on  which  I  came  hither  !  " 

The  celebrity  conferred  on  Shelley  by  the 
publication  of  his  pamphlets  served  to  attract 
distressed  persons  of  all  kinds  to  him,  and  to 
bring  him  into  contact  with  the  deepest  depths 
of  poverty  in  Dublin. 

"I  cannot  recount,"  he  writes  to  Miss  Kitchener,  March 
loth,  "all  the  horrible  instances  of  unrestricted  and  licensed 
tyranny  that  have  met  my  ears,  scarcely  those  which  have 
personally  occurred  to  me.  ...  I  am  sick  of  this  city,  and 
long  to  be  with  you  and  peace.  The  rich  grind  the  poor 
into  abjectness,  and  then  compl^iin  that  they  are  abject. 
Thev  goad  them  to  famine,  and  hang  them  if  they  steal  a 
loaf." 

We  may  compare  with  the  foregoing  h'nes 
the  gloomy  picture. of  contemporary  Ireland  that 
has  been  traced  for  us  by  Mr.  George  Moore — 
a  writer  who  is  now  at  the  head  of  the  realistic 
school  of  novelists  in  England — in  his  lifelike 
study:  "Terre  d'Irlande."  * 

The  words  of  wisdom,  and  the  paternal 
warnings  of  Godwin,  who  wrote  :  "  Shelley, 
you   are   preparing   a  scene  of  blood  !  "  f  helped 

*  One  vol.,  Charpentier,  18S7. 
t  "  Say  not  with  Macbeth  : 

I  am  in  blood 
Stept  in  so  far,  that,  should  I  wade  no  more, 
RetLrrning  were  as  tedious  as  go  o'er." 


156     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

to  turn  him  from  the  enthusiastic  enterprise  to 
which  he  had  devoted  all  his  heartfelt  and  burning 
eloquence. 

"  It  is  indescribably  painful,"  he  writes  to  Godwin  on 
March  1 8th,  "to  contemplate  beings  capable  of  soaring  ta 
the  heights  of  science  with  Newton  and  Locke,  without 
attempting  to  awaken  them  from  a  state  of  lethargy  so 
opposite.  .  .  .  But  I  submit  — I  shall  address  myself  no 
more  to  the  illiterate.  I  will  look  to  events  in  which  it 
will  be  impossible  that  I  can  share,  and  make  myself  the 
cause  of  an  effect  which  will  take  place  ages  after  I  have 
mouldered  in  the  dust  ;  I  need  not  observe  that  this  resolve 
requires  stoicism.  To  return  to  the  heartless  bustle  of 
ordinary  life,  to  take  interest  in  its  uninteresting  details,  I 
cannot.  Wholly  to  abstract  our  views  from  self,  undoubtedly 
requires  unparalleled  disinterestedness.  There  is  not  a 
completer  abstraction  than  labouring  for  distant  ages." 

On  March  30th,  18 12,  when  Shelley  wrote 
those  lines,  and  shaking  the  dust  from  his  feet, 
prepared  to  quit  that  other  Jerusalem  unworthy 
of  his  labours  and  his  love,  he  learned  that  in 
this  world,  as  Baudelaire  expresses  it,  "Taction 
n'est  pas  la  sœur  du  rêve,"  and  received  the 
revelation  of  his  real  genius. 

The  true  poet  was  born.  Godwin,  delighted 
to  see  in  him  no  longer  "a  Robert  Emmet,* 
an  ephemeral  meteor,''  but  instead,  a  worker 
patiently  watching  the  incessant  though  imper- 
ceptible  progress    of  mankind,  could    now   chant 

*  Shelley  wrote,  probably  in  Dublin,  a  poem  entitled 
"The  Tomb  of  Robert  Emmet."  Mr.  Uowden  gives  us  the 
two  last  verses  : 

No  trump  tells  thy  virtues — the  grave  where  they  rest 
With  thy  dust  shall  remain  unpolluted  by  fame, 

Till  thy  foes,  by  the  world  and  by  fortune  carest. 
Shall  pass  like  a  mist  Irom  the  light  of  thy  name. 

When  the  storm-cloud  that  lowers  o'er  the  daybeam  is  gone, 
Unchanged,  unextinguished,  its  lifespring  will  shine  ; 

When  Erin  has  ceased  with  their  memory  to  groan. 
She  will  smile  through  the  tears  of  revival  on  thine. 


SHELLEY  AND   GODWIN.  157 

"his  "Nunc  dimittis"  and  write  to  him   in  these 
words  : 

The  thing  most  to  be  desired,  I  believe,  is  to  keep  up 
the  intellectual,  and  in  some  sense  the  solitary  fermentation, 
and  to  procrastinate  the  contact  and  consequent  action. 
This  thing  has  its  time  :  "  In  the  hour  that  ye  think  not,  the 
Son  of  Man  cometh." 


CHAPTER   IX. 

shelley  in  wales — at  nantgwilt — in  north 
devon  —  in  london — at  tanyralt — at 
lynton  —  letters  to  godwin — "  queen 
mab" — 1812-1813. 

A  SHORT  time  previous  to  his  departure  from 
Dublin,  Shelley  had  succeeded  in  becoming 
acquainted  with  the  incorruptible  Curran,  and 
was  invited  to  dinner  at  his  house.  The  poet 
discovered,  to  his  great  mortification,  that  a 
celebrated  patriot,  when  he  has  reached  a  certain 
age,  can  care  for  good  living  as  much  as  for  his 
country,  and  can  unite  devotion  to  liberty  with 
a  decided  taste  for  license  in  speech.  To  such 
an  one  as  Shelley,  the  brilliant  talents  of  his 
host  (whom  Byron  described  as  an  "imagination 
machine,  just  as  Piron  was  an  epigram  machine,^') 
could  not  compensate  for  these  faults.  He 
wrote  of  him  to  Godwin  in  the  following 
terms  : 

Curran  is  certainly  a  man  of  great  abilities,  but  it  appears 
to  me  that  he  undervalues  his  powers  when  he  applies  them 
to  what  is  usually  the  subject  of  his  conversation.  I  may 
not  possess  sufficient  taste  to  relish  humour,  or  his  incessant 
comicality  may  weary  that  which  I  possess.  He  does  not 
possess  that  mould  of  mind  which  I  have  been  accustomed 
to  contemplate  with  the  highest  feelings  of  respect  and  love. 


SHELLEY  IN  WALES.  159 

In  short,  though  Curran  indubitably  possesses  a  strong 
understanding  and  a  brilliant  fancy,  I  should  not  have 
beheld  him  with  the  feelings  of  admiration  which  his  first 
visit  excited,  had  he  not  been  your  intimate  friend. 

Shelley  left  Ireland  on  April  4th,  1812. 
Before  his  departure,  he  despatched  a  box  con- 
taining the  remaining  copies  of  his  different 
pamphlets  printed  in  Ireland,  to  his  dear  friend 
Miss  Kitchener.  This  box  was  delayed  at  the 
Holyhead  custom-house,  and  opened  by  a  clerk 
who,  on  examining  the  contents,  communicated 
with  the  Home  Secretary,  and  some  corre- 
spondence* ensued  concerning  it. 

Among  the  papers  it  contained,  we  are  already 
acquainted  with  the  "  Address  "  and  "  Proposals 
for  an  Association  ;  "  the  "  Declaration  of  Rights," 
the  most  revolutionary  in  tone  of  those  seized 
by  the  police,  was  a  mere  copy  of  the  French 
Declaration  in  1789,  and  of  that  of  Robespierre; 
the  Code  of  the  Republican  policy  is  set  forth  in  it 
in  thirty-one  articles,  expressed  with  terseness, 
and  sometimes  with  epigrammatic  force.f  The 
first  article  is  headed:  "Government  has  no 
Rights,'^  and  he  echoes  Rousseau  in  saying: 
'"What  the  rich  give  to  the  poor,  whilst  millions 
are  starving,  is  not  a  perfect  favour,  but  an 
imperfect  right." 

Poetry,  too,  played  a  part  in  this  arsenal  of 
revolutionary  weapons,  in  the  shape  of  a  ballad  on 
"The  Devil's  Walk,"  a  subject  which  had  already 
been  handled  by  Southey  and  Coleridge  in 
common. 

On  April  14th  the  travellers  arrived,  after 
a   week  of  wandering,  in   the   neighbourhood   of 

*  In  one  of  the  papers  belonging  to  the  correspondence 
and  kept  at  the  Record  Office,  Shelley  is  mentioned  as 
a  dangerous  and  most  extraordinary  man. 

t  Ihere  is  an  excellent  article  on  this  subject  by  Mr. 
Rossetli  in  the  ForUiightly  Review,  January  7th,  1871. 


i6o    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Cwm  Elan,  where  Shelley  had  passed  some 
melancholy  weeks  the  preceding  year.  There 
was  an  old  house  near  by,  situated  on  the 
picturesque  stream,  from  which  it  took  its  name 
of  Nantgvvilt,  which  offered  a  comfortable  resting- 
place,  and  the  charm  of  beautiful  scenery,  too, 
to  the  romantic. 

"  The  cheapness,  beauty,  and  retirement,"  writes  Shelley 
to  Godwin,  "  make  this  place  in  every  point  of  view  desirable. 
Nor  can  I  view  this  scenery — mountains  and  rocks  seeming 
to  form  a  barrier  round  this  quiet  valley,  which  the  tumult  of 
the  world  may  never  overleap — without  associating  your 
presence  with  the  idea,  that  of  your  wife,  your  children,  and 
one  other  friend  to  complete  the  picture  which  my  mind 
has  drawn  to  itself  of  felicity.     Come  to  Wales.  .  .  ." 

We  are  now*  embosomed  in  the  solitude  of  mountains, 
woods,  and  rivers,  silent,  solitary,  and  old  ;  far  from  any 
town,  six  miles  from  Rhayader,  which  is  nearest.  A  ghost 
haunts  the  house,  which  has  frequently  been  seen  by  the 
servants.  We  have  several  witches  in  our  neighbourhood, 
and  are  quite  stocked  with  fairies  and  hobgoblins  of  every 
description. 

Ghosts  of  another  kind  haunted  Shelley's 
imagination — melancholy  recollections  of  his 
former  visit  to  scenes,  which  now,  owing  to 
the  brighter  circumstances  surrounding  him, 
wore  so  different  an  aspect. 

Nantgwilt  ...  is  in  the  neighbourhood  of  scenes  marked 
deeply  on  my  mind  by  the  thoughts  which  possessed  it 
when  present  among  them.  The  ghosts  of  these  old  friends 
have  a  dim  and  strange  appearance,  when  resuscitated  in  a 
situation  so  altered  as  mine  is,  since  I  felt  that  they 
were  alive.t 

This  retrospect  of  the  past  took  such  hold 
of  Shelley,  that,  according  to  his  habit  whenever 
deeply  moved,  he  gave  it  shape  in  verse  :  "  The 
Retrospect:  Cwm  Elan,  i8i2."| 

♦Letter  to  Miss  Kitchener,  April  i8th,  1812. 
t  Letter  to  Godwin,  April  15. 

X  Published  for  the  first  time  in  Mr.  Dowden's  "Life 
of  Shelley,"  Vol.  1.,  p.  270. 


SHELLEY  IN   WALES.  i6r 

But  the  fatality  which  seemed  ever  to  pursue 
the  poet,  crying  aloud  to  him  as  erstwhile  to  his 
"  Wandering  Jew/'  "  On  !  on  !  "  forbade  any  long 
enjoyment  of  the  peaceful  happiness  of  Nantgwilt. 
The  serious  illness  of  Harriet,  and  the  distress 
caused  to  his  friend  Miss  Hitchener  by  scandalous 
reports  concerning  herself  and  him,  destroyed  his 
delight  in  Cwm  Elan.  What  !  slander  Portia  \ 
Slander  their  pure  and  ideal  affection  !  And  her 
father  dared  to  forbid  her  to  visit  at  Shelley^s 
house  ! 

You  have  agitated  her  mind  until  her  frame  is  seriously 
deranged  .  .  .  you  may  destroy  her  by  disease,  but  her 
mind  is  free  ;  that  you  cannot  hurt.  .  .  .  Fates  give  my 
Harriet  health,  give  my  Portia  peace,  and  I  will  excuse  .  .  . 
the  rest. 

"  You  are,"  he  writes  to  Portia  herself,  "  you  are  ta 
my  fancy  as  a  thunder-riven  pinnacle  of  rock,  firm  amid  the 
rushing  tempest  and  the  boiling  surge.  Ay,  stand  for  ever 
firm,  and  when  our  ship  anchors  close  to  thee,  the  crew  will 
cover  thee  with  flowers  !  " 

We  smile,  as  Mr,  Dowden  remarks,  "at 
Shelley's  boyish  raptures  ;  "  but  it  was  the  same 
temperament  and  the  same  idealising  imagination 
which,  when  matured  and  refined,  gave  to  English 
poetry  the  rapture,  swift  and  high,  and  the  shining" 
imagery  of  the  "  Epipsychidion." 

Pecuniary  embarrassments  put  an  end  to 
Shelley's  project  of  settling  himself  in  Wales. 
He  was  unable  to  provide  the  requisite  six  or 
seven  hundred  pounds.  The  travellers  left  Nant- 
gwilt on  June  nth  and  removed  to  Lynmouth. 
in  North  Devon.  There  they  dwelt  for  some 
weeks  in  a  little  cottage,  being  amply  compensated 
for  the  poor  accommodation  by  the  beauty  of 
the  site  and  surrounding  scencr}'. 

It  equals  .  .  .  Nantgwilt.  Mountains  certainly  of  not 
less  perpendicular  elevation  than  a  thousand  feet  are  broken 
abruptly  into  valleys  of  indescribable  fertility  and  grandeur. 


1 62     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

The  climate  is  so  mild  that  myrtles  of  an  immense  size  twine 
up  our  cottage,  and  roses  blow  in  the  open  air  in  winter.  In 
aodition  to  these  is  the  sea  which  dashes  against  a  rocky  and 
caverned  shore,  presenting  an  ever-changing  view.  All 
"shows  of  sky  and  earth,  of  sea  and  valley,"  are  here. 

Jtcly  ^th,  1812. 

But  Shelley  could  not  enjoy  these  lovely  scenes 
alone  ;  he  needed  for  the  perfect  appreciation 
of  their  beauty  those  friends  of  his  soul,  the  great 
Godwin,  the  divine  Portia.  The  latter,  in  ac- 
cordance with  his  counsels,  had  overcome  every 
obstacle,  and  was  hastening  to  join  him.  The 
poet  wished  Godwin  to  be  acquainted  with  so 
precious  a  treasure  of  Deism  and  Republicanism  ; 
and  Miss  Hitchener  had  accordingly  called  upon 
him  on  her  way  through  London.  The  author 
of  '^  Political  Justice  "  received  Shelley's  friend 
as  he  would  have  received  Shelley  himself;  never- 
theless he  allowed  her  to  perceive  a  consciousness 
of  his  own  superiority. 

From  what  we  know  of  Shelley's  enthusiastic 
idolatry  of  Miss  Hitchener,  Ave  may  infer  with  what 
transports  of  mystic  tenderness,  with  what  ideal 
effusiveness  he  must  have  welcomed  under  his 
roof  her  whose  coming  he  had  hastened  in  the 
following  words  :  "  I  have  much  to  tell  you  about, 
innate  passions,  God,  Christianity,  etc."  *  The 
enchantment,  alas  !  was  of  short  duration  !  The 
immaculate  angel  soon  became  the  "  Brown 
Demon."     So  soon  as  Shelley,  truly  a  spoilt  child, 

*  It  was  agreed  between  the  ladies,  who  disliked  the 
name  of  Portia,  that  she  should  be  called  simply  Bessy. 
Hogg  gives  the  following  description  of  Bessy,  which  does 
not  appear  to  be  overdrawn  :  "  Miss  Hitchener  was  tall  and 
thin,  bony  and  masculine,  of  a  dark  complexion,  and  the 
symbol  of  male  ^visdom,  a  beard,  was  not  entirely  wanting. 
She  was  neither  young  nor  old,  not  handsome — not  ab- 
solutely ill-looking.  She  had  been  a  governess,  and  a 
schoolmistress,  as  was  sufficiently  indicated  by  a  prim, 
formal,  didactic  manner  and  speech." 


SHELLEY  IN   WALES.  163 

had  his  sublime  plaything  in  his  hands,  he  must 
needs  find  out  what  it  was  made  of;  then,  the  toy 
being  broken,  he  flung  the  pieces  to  the  winds. 

But  meanwhile  the  early  Lynmouth  days  must 
be  reckoned  among  the  happiest  of  his  life,  "  His 
love  for  Harriet/'  says  Mr.  Dowden,  "  was  ardent, 
and  unmarred  by  fleck  or  flaw  ;  "  and  "  Love,"  as 
he  himself  wrote  at  this  period,  "  seems  inclined 
to  stay  in  his  prison."*  The  hour  of  disenchant- 
ment with  Miss  Hitchener  had  not  yet  struck  ; 
he   received    letter   upon   letter   from    Godwin  ;  f 

*  On  the  first  of  August  was  Harriet's  birthday,  and 
Shelley  addressed  to  her  a  birthday  sonnet,  hitherto 
unpublished  : 

Ever  as  now  with  Love  and  Virtue's  glow 
May  thy  un  withering  soul  not  cease  to  burn, 

Still  may  thine  heart  with  those  pure  thoughts  o'erflow, 
Which  force  from  mine  such  quick  and  warm  return. 

To  this  date  also,  Mr.  Dowden  thinks,  we  may  ascribe 
an  unpublished  blank  verse  poem  addressed  to  Harriet, 
which  is  a  curious  mixture  of  tenderness  and  of  moral 
aspirations.     The  following  lines  form  part  of  it  : 

Harriet  !  let  death  all  mortal  ties  dissolve, 
But  ours  shall  not  be  mortal  !     The  cold  hand 
Of  Time  may  chill  the  love  of  earthly  minds, 
Half  frozen  now  ;  the  frigid  intercourse 
Of  common  souls  lives  but  a  summer's  day  ; 
•  .  .  But  ours  ! 

.  .  .  Can  those  eyes 
Beaming  with  mildest  radiance  on  my  heart 
To  puiiiy  its  purity,  e'er  bend 
To  soothe  its  vice  or  consecrate  its  fears .'' 
Never,  thou  second  self!     Is  confidence 
So  vain  in  virtue  that  I  learn  to  doubt 
The  mirror  even  of  Truth  ?  .  .  . 
Virtue  and  Love  1  unbending  Fortitude, 
Freedom,  Devotedness,  and  Purity  ! 
That  life  my  spirit  consecrates  to  you. 

+  We  regret  we  cannot  give  longer  extracts  from  this 
interesting  correspondence,  of  which  the  subject  was  mostly 
philosophy.     One  very  remarkable  letter,  a  formal  pleading 

M  2 


1 64    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

books  were  sent  for  from  London,  to  be  perused 
and  discussed  with  Bessy  ;  and  his  mind  was 
vigorously  at  work  either  with  new  pleas  in  prose 
on  behalf  of  liberty  of  speech,  or  with  enterprises 
of  pith  and  moment  in  English  verse.* 

Shelley  never  missed  an  opportunity  during 
his  short  life  of  raising  his  voice  in  favour  of 
the  liberties  of  the  people,  oppressed  as  they 
were  by  tyrannical  power  ;  he  deemed  interference 
with  the  right  of  free  speech  and  a  free  press 
to  be  the  worst  encroachment  on  liberty  ;  many 
a  time  he  boldly  defended  those  who  had  ventured 
to  defy  the  resentment  and  wrath  of  the  political 
inquisition  on  free-thought,  which  seemed  to 
him  to  be  a  renewal  of  the  auto-da-fe  and  the 
stake  of  the  Middle  Ages.  In  May,  1812,  a  man 
named  Eaton,  a  London  bookseller,  was  sentenced 
to  eighteen  months*  imprisonment  and  to  the 
pillory  for  publishing  "a  blasphemous  libel  on  the 
Holy  Scriptures,"  entitled,  "  The  Age  of  Reason," 
Part  III.,  by  Paine.  On  June  nth,  Shelley  wrote 
to  Godwin  : 

What  do  you  think  of  Eaton's  trial  and  sentence  ?  I  do- 
not  mean  to  insinuate  that  this  poor  bookseller  has  any 
characteristics  in  common  with  Socrates  or  Jesus  Christ  ;. 
slill  the  spirit  which  pillories  and  imprisons  him,  is  the  same 
which  brought  them  to  an  untimely  end  ;  still,  even  in  this 
enlightened  age,  the  moralist  and  reformer  may  expect 
coercion  analogous  to  that  used  with  the  humble  yet  zealous 
imitator  of  their  endeavours.  I  have  thought  of  addressing 
the  public  on  the  subject,  and  indeed  have  begun  an  outline 
of  the  address. 


against   classical  education  being  restricted   to   the  study 
of  antiquity,  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix. 

*  To  this  period  must  be  referred  an  unpublished  frag- 
ment of  three  hundred  lines  entitled  "The  Voyage,"  and  in 
all  probability,  thinks  Mr.  Dowden,  another  poem  called  "A 
Retrospect  of  Times  of  Old."  Air.  Dowden  thinks  it  likely 
that  "  Queen  Mab  "  took  a  definite  shape  at  Nantgwilt  and 
at  Lynmouth. 


SHELLEY  IN  WALES.  165 

During  his  stay  at  Lynmouth,  Slielley  put  the 
■finishing  touch  to  his  outspoken  pamphlet, 
addressed  to  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England, 
Lord  EUenborough.* 

It  breathes  the  same  passionate  eloquence  as 
'*'  Queen  Mab,"  which  he  was  then  writing, 
taking  refuge  in  poetry  as  in  a  sanctuary  which 
*'  iron-hearted  persecution  "  was  unable  to  violate. 

At  the  same  period  he  was  distributing  his 
Irish  pamphlets — "  Proposals  for  an  Association," 
-"  The  Devil's  Walk,"  and  the  "  Declaration  of 
Rights" — about  Barnstaple,  by  the  hands  of  Daniel 
-Healey,t  an  Irishman  in  his  service,  who  was 
consequently  arrested  on  August  19th,  and 
brought  before  the  Mayor  of  Barnstaple.  Healey 
was  convicted  of  distributing  printed  pamphlets 
without  the  printer's  name  affixed,  and  was 
ordered  to  pay  a  fine  of  ;^200,  or,  in  default, 
to  be  imprisoned  for  six  months.  There  was 
also  a  rumour  that  the  author  and  the  printer 
of  the  letter  to  Lord  EUenborough  would  be 
prosecuted,  and  the  alarmed  printer  is  said  to 
have  destroyed  the  remaining  copies.  But  such 
commonplace  yet  dangerous  methods  of  propa- 
ganda were  not  enough  for  Shelley  ;  his  romantic 
fancy  devised  a  means  of  publicity  which  no 
Attorney-General  could  reach — the  elements 
were  enlisted  in  his  service;  air  and  water  became 
emissaries  of  the  new  gospel  of  humanity. 

"Accordingly,  we  discover  Shelley,  accompanied 
by  a  tall  foreign-looking  female,  on  the  Lyn mouth 

*  "A  Letter  to  Lord  EUenborough."  "This  letter,"  says 
Mr.  Dowden,  "  has  none  of  the  majestic  force  of  Milton's 
speech  on  behalf  of  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing  .... 
'but  it  has  clearness  and  vigour,  and  is  certainly  superior  in 
•style  to  anything  which  Shelley  had  previously  written.' 

t  Known  hitherto  under  the  alias  of  Hill,  Mr.  Dowden 
has  reinstated  him  in  his  right  name.  The  Irishman  was 
devoted  to  Shelley,  and  declared  he  would  go  through  fire 
.and  water  for  him. 


i66    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

beach,  pushing  certain  small  boxes — well  resined' 
and  waxed  to  keep  out  the  water,  and  each 
with  mast  and  sail — from  the  rocks,  or  watching 
from  his  boat  a  little  flotilla  of  dark  green  bottles 
tightly  corked,  which  rise  and  sink  as  the  waves 
sway  them  seawards  ;  or  we  see  him  in  the 
twilight  launching  his  little  luminous  balloons 
laden  with  truth  and  virtue,  into  the  sky.  On 
returning  from  such  expeditions  as  these,  Shelley 
would  speed  his  envoys  forward  on  their  mis- 
sion with  the  breath  of  good  wishes  winged  by 
song." 

We   owe   to    Mr.    Dowden   two   of  these   un- 
published sonnets  : 

SONNET  TO   A    BALLOON    LADEN   WITH 
KNOWLEDGE. 

Bright  ball  of  flame,  that  thro'  the  gloom  of  even 

Silently  takest  thine  ethereal  way, 

And  with  surpassing  glory  dimm'st  each  ray, 
Twinkling  amid  the  dark-blue  depths  of  Heaven, — 
Unlike  the  fire  thou  bearest,  soon  shalt  thou 

Fade  like  a  meteor  in  surrounding  gloom, 
Whilst  that  unquenchable  is  doomed  to  glow 

A  watch-light  by  the  patriot's  lonely  tomb  ; 
A  ray  of  courage  to  the  opprest  and  poor  ; 

A  spark,  though  gleaming  on  the  hovel's  hearth, 
Which  through  the  tyrant's  gilded  domes  shall  roar  ; 

A  beacon  in  the  darkness  of  the  Earth  ; 
A  sun  which,  o'er  the  renovated  scene. 
Shall  dart  like  Truth  where  Falsehood  yet  has  been. 

ON  LAUNCHING  SOME  BOTTLES  FILLED  WITH 
KNOWLEDGE  INTO  THE  BRITISH  CHANNEL. 

Vessels  of  heavenly  medicine  !  may  the  breeze 
Auspicious  waft  your  dark  green  forms  to  shore  ! 
Safe  may  ye  stem  the  wide  surrounding  roar 
Of  the  wild  whirlwinds  and  the  raging  seas  ! 
And  oh  !  if  Liberty  e'er  deigned  to  stoop 

From  vender  lovely  throne,  her  crownless  brow. 
Sure  she  will  breathe  around  your  emerald  group 

The  fairest  breezes  of  her  west  that  blow. 


SHELLEY  LN   WALES.  167 

Yes  !  she  will  waft  ye  to  some  freeborii  soul,  ♦ 

Whose  eye-beam,  kindling  as  it  meets  your  freight, 
Her  heaven-born  flame  in  suffering  earth  will  light, 
Until  its  radiance  gleams  from  pole  to  pole. 
And  tyrant  hearts  with  powerless  envy  burst 
To  see  their  night  of  ignorance  dispersed. 

Lord  Sidmouth,  at  that  time  Secretary  of 
State  for  the  Home  Department,  was  warned 
by  an  informer,  named  Henry  Drake,  of  Shelley's 
movements,  and  caused  him  to  be  watched  and 
followed.  Secret  reports  were  sent  to  him  relating 
every  action  of  the  poet  :  Shelley  had  been  seen 
in  company  with  a  woman  throwing  suspicious 
boxes  into  the  sea  ;  one  of  these  on  being  opened, 
was  found  to  contain  the  "  Declaration  of  Rights," 
and  inside  a  floating  bottle  another  person  had 
found  "  The  Devil's  Walk.''  The  Mayor  of  Barn- 
staple received  instructions  to  watch  the  offender  ; 
but  the  poet  had  escaped  the  snare,  and  had 
vanished  from  Lynmouth.  He  had  been  obliged 
to  borrow  the  sum  of  four  pounds,  nine  shillings. 
Three  weeks  later,  Godwin,  in  response  to 
repeated  invitations,  reached  Lynmouth  on 
September  i8th.  Great  was  the  disappointment 
of  that  patriarchal  philosopher,  who,  as  Hogg 
tells  us,  relying  on  the  liberality  of  his  host, 
had  not  brought  sufficient  money  with  him  to 
defray  the  cost  of  his  journey  back  to  London, 
and  now  found  himself  short  of  cash  in  a  strange 
place. 

On  leaving  Lynmouth,  Shelley  had  journeyed 
to  South  Wales,  and  installed  himself  at  Tanyralt, 
near  Tremadoc,  Carnarvonshire.  The  cottage 
was  picturesquely  perched  on  a  hill,  beneath 
enormous  rocks,  and  belonged  to  Mr.  Madocks, 
an  Oxford  man,  and  Member  of  Parliament.  It 
is  "a  cottage,"  he  wrote  to  Hogg,  "extensive 
and  tasty  enough  for  an  Italian  prince."  Shelley's 
landlord,   in   common    with    all    who    knew    him 


I  es     SHELLE  Y-THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

intimately,  was  soon  charmed  with  the  character 
and  genius  of  his  tenant. 

It  would  have  been  strange  indeed,  could 
Mr.  Madccks  have  remained  untouched  by 
Shelley's  enthusiastic  admiration  for  the  great 
works  he  was  endeavouring  to  carry  out.  The 
little  town  of  Tremadoc  had  been  built  by  him 
on  land  reclaimed  from  the  encroachments  of 
the  sea,  and  he  was  now  endeavouring  to  reclaim 
five  thousand  acres  more  of  submerged  land 
by  means  of  a  vast  embankment.  Any  project 
for  furthering  the  welfare  of  mankind  claimed 
Shelley^s  whole  attention.  He  united  his  efforts 
with  those  of  Mr.  Madocks  with  the  same 
enthusiasm  that  he  had  displayed  in  the  Irish 
crusade.  A  strong  tide  having  on  one  occasion 
destroyed  part  of  the  embankment,  Shelley 
proposed  at  once  to  call  a  meeting,  and  raised 
a  subscription,  at  the  head  of  which  he  inscribed 
his  own  name  for  one  hundred  pounds.  Moreover, 
he  undertook  to  solicit  aid  from  the  neighbouring 
gentry,  "in  spite  of  their  bigotry  and  prejudice," 
and  with  his  three  companions  travelled  to 
London,  there  to  receive  further  subscriptions. 
(October  4th,  18 12.) 

There  were  two  other  great  inducements  to 
make  the  journey  to  London  :  to  meet  Godwin, 
and  to  see  Hogg  once  more. 

It  is  easy  to  guess  with  what  affection  the 
Socrates  of  Skinner  Street  must  have  received 
a  first  visit  from  his  disciple,  who,  although  hitherto 
unknown  to,  and  separated  by  distance  from 
him,  seemed  to  be  almost  one  of  his  own  family. 
Godwin  welcomed  him  as  a  friend  or  son,  and 
a  day  seldom  passed  without  long  conferences 
between  them  on  metaphysics,  morals,  politics, 
on  spirit  and  matter,  atheism,  utility  and  truth, 
the  clergy,  the  Church,  or  the  characteristics 
of    German   thought    and    literature.       Godwin's 


SHELLEY  IN  WALES.  169 

young-  daughters  must  have  looked  on  the 
novehst,  the  poet,  the  champion  of  Ireland,  as 
a  hero  or  demi-god.  Shelley  does  not  appear  to 
have  bestowed  much  notice  on  the  two  younger 
girls,  Clare  and  Mary;  he  was  most  attracted 
by  Mary  Wollstonecraft's  first-born  daughter — 
poor  Fanny  Imlay! — a  gentle  and  melancholy 
creature,  who  four  years  later  was  destined  to 
follow  her  mother's  example  and  drown  herself 
in  the  Thames.* 

Hogg  was  absent  for  the  vacation,  and 
Shelley  awaited  his  return  to  London  to  renew 
a  friendship  so  disastrously  interrupted.  The 
wound  had  been  healed  by  time,  and  when 
they  met  again  all  the  past  was  forgotten. 

Shelley  took  the  opportunity  of  the  visit 
to  London  to  rid  his  household  of  her  whom 
he  now  called  "the  Brown  Demon."  His 
early  illusion  had  been  dispelled,  and  the  poor 
Sussex  schoolmistress  now  appeared  as  she 
really  was,  or  even  worse,  a  strong-minded  but 
vulgar  woman,  an  insupportable  and  ridiculous 
blue  -  stocking  ;  and  most  absurd  of  all,  she 
imagined  herself  a  poet!  Yet  may  not  this 
-delusion  have  been  partly  Shelley's  own  fault  ?t 
At  a  later  period  he  used  to  relate,  laughing 
till  the  tears  ran  down  his  face,  that  at  Lynmouth 
Miss  Hitchener  had  written  an  ode  on  the 
emancipation  of  her  sex,  the  first  line  of  which 
ran  as  follows  : 

All,  all  are  men — women  and  all! 

On    her   return    to   her   school    he  undertook, 

*  A  correct  version  of  this  occurrence  is  given  by  the 
Author  in  another  place. 

t  Mr.  Dowden  quotes  some  lines  of  a  poem  by  Miss 
Hiiehener,  which  appeared  in  1822,  the  year  of  Shelley's 
death,  and  "proves  that  its  author,  thouL,di  not  a  pott,  was  a 
■woman  of  some  culture  and  vigour  of  mind." 


I70    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

somewhat  ungraciously,  to  allow  her  an  annuity 
of  forty  or  fifty  pounds,  in  order  to  repair  as  far 
as  possible  the  injury  he  had  done  her.*  And 
on  December  3rd,  he  wrote  to  Hogg-  on  the 
subject  in  these  words: 

The  Brown  Demon,  as  we  call  our  late  tormentor  and 
schoolmistress,  must  receive  her  stipend.  .  .  .  She  was 
deprived  by  our  misjudging  haste  of  a  situation  where  she 
was  going  on  smoothly,  and  now  she  says  that  her  reputation 
is  gone,  her  health  ruined,  her  peace  of  mind  destroyed 
by  my  barbarity  ;  a  complete  victim.  .  .  .  This  is  not 
all  fact  ;  but  certainly  she  is  embarrassed  and  poor,  and 
we  being  in  some  degree  the  cause,  we  ought  to  obviate 
it.  She  is  an  artificial,  superficial,  ugly,  hermaphrodite 
woman,  and  my  astonishment  at  my  fatuity,  inconsistency, 
and  bad  taste  was  never  so  great  as  after  living  for  four 
months  with  her  as  an  inmate.  What  would  Hell  be 
were  such  a  woman  in  Heaven  ?  t 

During  his  sojourn  in  London,  Shelley  formed 
an  intimacy  with  Mr.  Newton  and  his  family, 
which  was  not  without  influence  on  the  moral 
direction  of  his  mind,  and  the  connections  he 
subsequently  formed.  Mr.  Newton  was  an  ardent 
vegetarian  ;  not  content  with  practising  the  system, 
he  had  just  published  an  essay  on  its  virtues, 
entitled,  "A  Return  to  Nature."  Shelley  was 
struck  with  the  admirable  health  and  beauty 
of  Mr.  Newton's  children,  who  had  been  brought 
up  on  vegetarian  principles.  "They  are  the 
most  beautiful  and  healthy  creatures  it  is  possible 

*  Mr.  Dowden  says  the  sum  was  ^100. 

t  With  reference  to  this  change  in  Shelley's  opinipns 
Mr.  Dowden  cjuotes  in  Miss  Kitchener's  favour  the  testimony 
of  an  acquaintance  of  Shelley's  who  saw  her  at  her  father's 
house  alter  her  return  to  Sussex.  "  She  was  sitting  alone, 
with  one  of  Shelley's  works  before  her.  Her  fine  black 
eve  lighted  up,  her  well-formed  Roman  countenance  was 
full  of  animation,  when  I  spoke  of  Shelley."  She  resumed 
her  former  profession,  and  conducted  a  girls'  school  with 
success.  Her  pupils  spoke  of  her  as  "a  high-principled, 
clever  woman,  with  a  remarkable  capacity  for  teaching." 


SHELLEY  IN  WALES.  i-ji 

to  conceive,  their  dispositions  the  most  gentle 
and  conciHating." 

He  perused  the  '  Return  to  Nature/'  which 
he  terms  a  "luminous  and  eloquent  essay,"  and 
borrowed  from  it  in  great  measure  the  arguments 
in  favour  of  vegetarianism  which  he  urges  in 
one  of  the  notes  to  "  Queen  Mab."  His  friendship 
with  the  Newtons  confirmed  him  in  the  practice 
of  the  Pythagorean  system,  which  he  had  begun  in 
Ireland,  and  to  which  he  ever  afterwards  adhered. 

His  departure  from  London  was  accelerated 
by  financial  embarrassments  ;  and  he  left  the 
metropolis  without  even  taking  leave  of  the 
Godwins,*  and  addresses  the  "miserable  city" 
in  a  farewell  poem,  in  which  he  praises  enthusi- 
astically the  vales  and  hills  of  wild  Cambria,  the 
sole  asylum,  he  thinks,  of  liberty  and  virtue.  Mr> 
Dowden  gives  us  part  of  the  poem  : 

ON    LEAVING   LONDON    FOR   WALES. 

Hail  to  thee,  Cambiia  !  for  the  unfettered  wind 

Which  from  thy  wilds  even  now  methinks  I  feel 
Chasing  the  clouds  that  roll  in  wrath  behind, 

And  tightening  the  soul's  laxest  nerves  to  steel. 
True  mountain  Liberty  alone  may  heal 

The  pain  which  Custom's  obduracies  bring, 
And  he  who  dares  in  fancy  even  to  steal 

One  draught  from  Snowdon's  ever  sacred  spring 
Blots  out  the  unholiest  rede  of  worldly  witnessing. 

And  shall  that  soul,  to  selfish  peace  resigned. 

So  soon  forget  the  woe  its  fellows  share  ? 
Can  Snowdon's  Lethe  from  the  freeborn  mind 

So  soon  the  page  of  injured  penury  tear  ? 
Does  this  fine  mass  of  human  passion  d:ire 

To  sleep,  unhonouring  the  patriot's  fall, 
Or  life's  sweet  load  in  quietude  to  bear, 

While  millions  famish  even  in  Luxury's  hall, 
And  Tyranny  high-raised  stem  lowers  on  all .'' 


*  He  apologises  for  the  omission  in  a  lively  letter 
to  Fanny,  who  had  reproached  him  for  his  abrupt  ancj 
uncivil  departure. 


i72     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

No,  Cambria  !  never  may  thy  matchless  va^es 

A  heart  so  false  to  hope  and  virtue  shield  ; 
Nor  ever  may  thy  spirit-breathing  gales 

Waft  freshness  to  the  slaves  who  dare  to  yield. 
For  me  !  .  .  .  The  weapon  that  I  burn  to  wield 

I  seek  amid  thy  rocks  to  ruin  hurled, 
That  Reason's  flag  may  over  Freedom's  field, 

Symbol  of  bloodless  victory,  wave  unfurled, 
A  meieor-sign  of  love  effulgent  o'er  the  world. 

Do  thou,  wild  Cambria,  calm  each  struggling  thought, 

Cast  thy  sweet  veil  of  rocks  and  woods  between, 
That  by  the  soul  to  indignation  wrought 

Mountains  and  dells  be  mingled  with  the  scene  : 
Let  me  for  ever  be  what  I  have  been, 

Eut  not  for  ever  at  my  needy  door 
Let  misery  linger  speechless,  pale,  and  lean. 

I  am  the  friend  of  the  unfriended  poor.* 
Let  me  not  madly  stain  their  righteous  cause  in  gore. 


A  certain  amount  of  discouragement  is  revealed 
in  the  poètes  verse,  and  perhaps  a  feeling  of 
regret  that  even  for  a  moment  he  should  have 
subordinated  the  high  interests  of  humanity  to 
which  his  genius  should  be  exclusively  devoted,  to 
a  private  enterprise  of  uncertain  results. 

He  had  failed  of  success  in  London  with 
regard  to  the  Tremadoc  embankment,  and 
perceived  he  had  thoughtlessly  engaged  himself 
in  an  affair  from  which  it  would  be  best  to 
withdraw,  and  return  to  poetry.  His  home, 
moreover,  was  full  of  charm:  "When  I  come 
home  to  Harriet  I  am  the  happiest  of  the  happy.'' 
His  young  wife  identified  herself  to  the  utmost 
with  his  ideas  and  aspirations,  studying 
various      subjects      under     his     direction,     Latin 

*  Mr.  Madocks  bears  witness  to  the  truth  of  these  words. 
"  I  have  oiten  heard  Mr.  Madocks  dilate,"  writes  Medwin, 
"on  Shelley's  numerous  acts  of  benevolence,  his  relieving 
the  distresses  of  the  poor,  visiting  them  in  their  humble 
abodes,  and  supplying  them  with  food,  and  raiment,  and. 
fuel  during  the  winter." 


SHELLEY  IN   WALES.  175 

especially;  she  could  already  read  some  Odes 
of  Horace,  and  purposed  writing  a  Latin  letter 
to  Hogg.  She  had  readily  conformed  to  the 
Pythagorean  system.  Her  fresh  young  voice, 
singing  old  Irish  melodies,  lent  a  charm  to  the 
winter  evenings,  and  the  anticipation  of  the 
birth  of  a  child  was  an  additional  source  of 
happiness.  Shelley  was  thus  independent  of 
the  society  of  his  neighbours  at  Tremadoc,  and 
wrote  of  them  to  Hookham  the  bookseller  : 
"  There  is  more  philosophy  in  one  square  inch 
of  your  counter  than  in  the  whole  of  Cambria.^' 

Two  important  events  marked  the  latter 
part  of  Shelley's  sojourn  at  Tanyralt  —  this 
acquaintance  with  Leigh  Hunt  and  the  completion 
of  "Queen  Mab/' 

Hunt  had  boldly  attacked,  in  the  Exajiiincry 
the  character  and  private  life  of  the  Prince 
Regent,  whom  Shelley  had  described  in  his 
Irish  pamphlets  as  forgetful  of  the  teaching  of 
the  great  Fox.  Not  satisfied  with  calling  him 
an  Adonis  of  fifty,  Hunt  had  proved  that  that 
*' delightful,  wise,  agreeable,  virtuous,  sincere  and 
immortal  Prince  was  a  violator  of  his  word,  a 
libertine  over  head  and  ears  in  disgrace,  a 
despiser  of  domestic  ties,  a  companion  of  gamblers 
and  demireps,  a  man  who  had  reached  the  age 
of  fifty  without  acquiring  any  claim  to  gratitude 
from  his  country,  or  respect  from  posterity." 

Thanks  to  Lord  Ellenborough's  charges  to  the 
jury,  and  notwithstanding  the  eloquent  speeches 
on  their  behalf  by  their  counsel  (lîrougham),  Leigh 
Hunt  and  his  brother  were  sentenced  to  two 
years'  imprisonment  and  a  fine  of  five  hundred 
pounds  each. 

"To  this  imprisonment,"  says  Hunt,  "  I  owe  my  acquaint- 
ance with  the  Iriend  of  friends,  Shelley.  He  wrote  to  me 
with  a  princely  olïcr  of  help,  which  at  that  time  I  did 
not  need." 


174    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE   POET. 

Shelley  wrote  on  the  subject  to  his  bookseller, 
Hookham,  in  February,  1813  : 

I  am  boiling  with  indignation  at  the  horrible  injustice 
and  tyranny  of  the  sentence  pronounced  on  Hunt  and  his 
brother.  .  .  .  Surely  the  seal  of  abjectness  and  slavery 
is  indelibly  stamped  upon  the  character  of  England. 

Although  I  do  not  retract  in  the  slightest  degree  my  wish 
for  a  subscription  for  the  widows  and  children  of  those  poor 
men  hung  at  York,  yet  this  ^1000  which  the  Hunts  are 
sentenced  to  pay  is  an  affair  of  more  consequence.  Hunt  is 
a  brave,  a  good,  and  an  enlightened  man.  Surely  the 
public,  for  whom  Hunt  has  done  so  much,  will  repay  in  part 
the  great  debt  of  obligation  which  they  owe  the  champion  of 
their  liberties  and  virtues  ;  or  are  they  dead,  cold,  stone- 
hearted,  and  insensible — brutalized  by  centuries  of  un- 
remitting bondage  ?  .  .  . 

I  am  rather  poor  at  present  ;  but  I  have  ^20  which 
is  not  immediately  wanted.  Pray  begin  a  subscription 
for  the  Hunts  ;  put  my  name  down  for  that  sum.  .  .  .  Oh  ! 
that  I  might  wallow  for  one  night  in  the  Bank  of  England  ! 

"Queen  Mab"  is  finished  and  transcribed.  I  am  now 
preparing  the  notes,  which  will  be  long  and  philosophical. 
You  will  receive  it  with  the  other  poems. 

"  Queen  Mab  "  is  Shelley's  first  serious  long 
poem,  and  it  gives  us  the  sum  of  his  intellectual 
life  up  to  that  date. 

Although  "Queen  Mab  "  marks  a  decisive  step 
in  Shelley's  poetical  career,  he  was  conscious  of  its 
shortcomings  and  defects  even  while  sending  it  for 
publication. 

"My  poems,"  he  writes  in  January,  1813,  "will,  I  fear, 
little  stand  the  criticism  even  of  friendship  ;  some  of  the 
later  ones*  have  the  merit  of  conveying  a  meaning  in  every 
word,  and  all  are  faithful  pictures  of  my  feelings  at  the 
time  of  writing  them.  But  they  are  in  a  great  measure 
abrupt  and  obscure — all  breathing  hatred  to  government 
and  religion.  .  .  .  One  fault  they  are  indisputably  exempt 
from,  that  of  being  a  volume  oi fashionable  literature." 

*  The  poems  to  which  Shelley  here  alludes,  and  which 
he  intended  to  publish  in  Ireland,  are  in  a  manuscript  in  his 
own  handwriting,  containing  2,822  lines.  Mr.  Dowden  first 
disclosed  to  the  world  the  existence  of  this  manuscript. 


SHELLEY  IN  WALES.  175 

"  In  spite  of  îts  various  errors  I  am  determined 
to  give  it  to  the  world/'  he  writes  to  Hookham  on 
sending  the  manuscript.  He  orders  the  books  to 
be  in  quarto,  and  on  good  paper^  to  attract  the 
aristocracy.  "  They  will  not  read  it/'  he  says, 
*'  but  their  daughters  may."' 

It  is  certain  that  Shelley  included  "Queen 
Mab"  among  those  of  his  poems  that  possessed 
little  merit  beyond  the  absence  of  vulgarity  and 
the  expression  of  the  twofold  hatred  with  which 
his  soul  was  filled.  Yet  "Queen  Mab"  was  more 
than  this.  It  was  a  serious  endeavour  to  establish 
on  a  philosophical  basis  his  project  of  reforma- 
tion for  the  world,  which  was  the  one  passion  of 
his  life  and  the  principal  inspiration  of  his  genius. 
It  is  very  difficult  to  class  this  poem  from  a  meta- 
physical point  of  view,  in  a  defined  and  precise 
system  with  Hume  or  Spinoza.  Neither  the  latter, 
nor  Kant,  ever  strongly  influenced  Shelley,  who 
was  only  beginning  to  read  Spinoza  when  he  put 
the  finishing  touches  to  his  poem.  In  order  fully 
to  comprehend  the  influences  under  which  he 
composed  "Queen  Mab,"  we  must  study  the 
notes  that  display  his  philosophical  knowledge, 
and  expound  didactically  his  views  on  physics 
and  morals.  Thus  he  quotes  the  fine  lines  from 
Ecclesiastes  :  '^  One  generation  passeth  away,  and 
another  generation  cometh,  but  the  earth  abideth 
for  ever.  The  sun  also  ariseth,  and  the  sun  goeth 
down,  and  hasteth  to  his  place  where  he  arose." 

Thus  do  the  generations  of  the  earth 

Go  to  the  grave,  and  issue  from  the  womb. 

And  from  Lucretius  the  admirable  passage  com- 
mencing, 

Suave  mari  magno  .  .  . 

to  justify  his  bold  departure  from  the  beaten  track 
in  which  humanity  strays  far  from  the  true  way  of 


lyô    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

life.  Rousseau  supplies  him  with  arguments  in 
favour  of  the  equahty  which  ought  to  be  estab- 
lished among  men;  La  Place,  Cabanis,  and  Bailly, 
suggest  his  astronomical  and  scientific  views.  He 
finds  in  Robinet's  "  Système  de  la  Nature/'  which 
he  himself  translated,  in  Pliny  the  Elder,  Lord 
Bacon,  Locke,  Hume,  Newton,  and  Condorcet, 
proofs  of  that  scientific  Atheism  which  he  opposes 
to  the  absurdities  of  theology. 

The  celebrated  work  by  Volncy,  "  Les  Ruines  '* 
— a  popular  exposition,  in  poetical  and  biblical 
language,  of  the  eighteenth-century  philosophy — 
suggested  to  him  the  plan,  and  even  the  frame- 
work, of  his  poem.  Volney's  genius,  who  looses 
the  mortal  coil  of  his  traveller,  and  bears  him, 
like  a  light  vapour,  into  the  upper  regions, 
becomes  the  fairy  Mab,  the  personification  of 
the  poetic  imagination,  revealing  to  the  spirit  of 
lanthe,*  separated  from  her  body,  the  history  of 
Good  and  Evil  on  the  earth,  and  the  future 
destiny  of  regenerated  mankind. 

If  Nature  (or  God)  is  innocent  of  the  evils- 
of  humanity,  then  man  himself  must  be  the 
principle  of  those  evils  ;  and  here  Shelley  con- 
trasts innocent  Nature  with  its  opposite,  Custom, 
the  very  source  of  hypocrisy,  depravity,  religion, 
and  tyranny  ;  of  money,  war,  prostitution,  and 
all  the  crime  and  suffering  in  the  world.  All  this,. 
we  shall  be  told,  is  declamatory  and  vulgar.  We 
may  admit  it  to  be  declamatory — Shelley  is  partly 
open  to  that  reproach — but  certainly  it  is  not 
vulgar;  for  Shelley,  even  when  uttering  the 
truisms  of  metaphysical  and  moral  commonplace, 
always  displayed  originality  and  vigour  of  form 
and   expression  which  take  hold   upon   you,  and 

*  A  Greek  name,  signifying  violet,  taken  by  Shelley  from 
Ovid's  "  Metamorphoses," 

"  Potiturque  sua  I  phis  lanthe." 
This  was  the  name  of  his  eldest  daughter. 


SHELLEY  IN   WALES.  177 

make  you  forget  whatever  is  redundant,  exagge- 
rated, or  inflated  in  his  style.  We  are  quite  of 
Mr.  Rossetti's  opinion  on  this  matter: 

The  part  of  "Queen  Mab"  which  has  some  considerable 
amount  of  promise,  and  even  of  positive  merit  at  times, 
is  the  declamatory  pait— the  passages  of  flexible  and 
sonorous  blank  verse  in  which  Shelley  boils  over  against 
kings  or  priests,  or  the  present  misery  of  the  world  of  man, 
and  in  acclaiming  augury  of  an  era  of  regeneration.  These 
passages,  with  all  their  obvious  literary  crudities  and  im- 
perfections, are,  in  their  way,  of  real  mark,  and  not  easily 
to  be  overmatched  by  other  poetic  writing  of  that  least  read- 
able sort,  the  didactic-declamatory. 

With  the  exception  of  M.  de  Lamennais's 
"  Paroles  d'un  Croyant,^'  we  know  of  nothing 
that  can  be  compared  with  them,  Mr.  Dowden 
has  admirably  defined  the  tendencies  and  spirit 
of  "Queen  Mab''  in  the  following  words  : 

Seldom  before  in  English  poetry  had  the  unity  of  Nature 
and  the  universality  of  law— the  idea  of  a  cosmos— been 
expressed  with  more  precision  or  a  more  ardent  conviction. 
Seldom  before  in  poetry  had  the  vast  and  ceaseless  flow 
of  Being— restless,  yet  subject  to  a  constant  law  of  evolution 
and  development— been  so  vividly  conceived.  Nature,  or 
as  Shelley  preferred  to  say,  the  Spirit  of  Nature,  acting 
necessarily,  and  at  present  producing  indifferently  good  and 
evil,  giving  birth  alike  to  the  hero,  the  martyr,  the  bigot, 
the  tyrant,  poisonous  serpent,  and  innocent  lamb,  yet  tends 
unconsciously  upward  to  nobler  developments,  purging  itself 
•of  what  is  weak  and  base.  Shelley's  spirit,  which  circles 
half  mournfully,  half  exultmgly,  above  the  ruins  of  the  past, 
which  rises  on  the  wing,  and  screams  at  sight  of  all  the 
oppressions  and  frauds  done  under  the  sun  in  tin's  our  dav, 
flies  to  the  future  and  embraces  it  with  a  lover's  joy.  .  .' 
That  his  ideal  of  the  future  golden  age  may  be  smiled  at  by 
common  sense  as  impracticable  and  impossible,  need  give 
us  small  offence.  In  following  the  sun  he  loses  his  way 
in  a  radiant  cloudland  ;  yet  s\ill,  amid  bright  voluminous 
folds  of  error,  he  is  on  the  track  of  the  sun. 

Shelley  himself,  however,  has  passed  judgment 
on  this  poem  more  severely  than  any  other  critic  has 
done.     "  Queen  Mab  "  having  been  surreptitiously 


178    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

printed  in  London  in  1821,  while  Shelley  was  iu' 
Italy,  he  wrote  the  following  letter  to  the  editor 
of  the  Examiner  : 

TO   THE    "EXAMINER." 

June  22nd,  1 82 1. 
A  poem,  entitled  "  Queen  Mab,"  was  written  by  me  at 
the  age  of  eighteen — I  dare  say  in  a  sufficiently  intemperate 
spirit,  I  have  not  seen  this  production  for  several  years  ; 
I  doubt  not  but  that  it  is  perfectly  worthless  in  point  of 
literary  composition  ;  and  that  in  all  that  concerns  moral 
and  political  speculation,  as  well  as  in  the  subtler  dis- 
criminations of  metaphysical  and  religious  doctrine,  it  is 
still  more  crude  and  immature.  I  am  a  devoted  enemy  to 
religious,  political,  and  domestic  oppression,  and  I  regret 
this  publication,  not  so  much  from  literary  vanity,  as  because 
I  fear  it  is  better  fitted  to  injure  than  to  serve  the  sacred 
cause  of  freedom. 

If  the  publication  of  "  Queen  Mab  "  was  not,  as 
Shelley  feared,  injurious  to  the  cause  of  liberty 
in  general,  it  was  injurious  at  least  to  his  own 
liberty,  for  it  became  the  pretext  of  all  the 
persecution  to  which  he  was  thenceforth  subjected. 
Few  indeed  were  thé  chosen  spirits  who  could 
distinguish  between  the  man  and  the  Atheist  in 
the  poem,  and  divine  the  great  future  poet  in  the 
author  of  "  Queen  Mab." 

In  the  summer  of  1S20,  Trelawney,  who  had 
not  at  that  time  heard  of  Shelley,  was  at  Lausanne^ 
and  made  the  acquaintance  of  one  of  those  few 
booksellers  whose  knowledge  extends  beyond 
indexes  and  catalogues.  This  man  read  and 
understood  the  books  he  sold  in  every  European 
tongue.  On  one  occasion  Trelawney  found  him 
sitting  under  Gibbon's  acacia  trees  and  absorbed  in 
the  perusal  of  an  English  book.  "I  can  read  your 
modern  English  poets,"  said  the  bookseller,  "  your 
Byron,  Scott,  and  Moore,  and  understand  them  as 
I  walk  along;  but  I  have  got  hold  of  a  book  by 
one  now  that  makes  me  stop  and  take  breath.     IL 


SHELLEY  IN   WALES.  lyg 

was  lying  among  a  lot  of  new  English  books  that 
I  had  not  yet  opened,  when  a  priest  happened 
to  pass  by  and  took  it  up.  After  a  brief  glance 
at  the  notes  he  exploded  in  wrath,  shouting  out  : 
'  Infidel  !  Jacobin  !  Leveller  !  Nothing  can  stop 
this  spread  of  blasphemy  but  the  stake  and  the 
faggot  ;  the  world  is  retrograding  into  accursed 
heathenism  and  anarchy  !  ' 

"  When  the  priest  had  departed,  I  took  up  the 
small  book  he  had  thrown  down,  saying  :  '  Surely 
there  must  be  something  here  worth  tasting.' 
You  know  the  proverb  :  No  person  throws  a  stone 
at  a  tree  that  does  not  bear  fruit.  It  was  Shelley's 
*  Queen  Mab/  The  fruit  is  crude  to  my  taste, 
but  well  flavoured  ;  it  requires  a  strong  stomach 
to  digest  it;  the  writer  is  an  enthusiast  and  has 
the  true  spirit  of  a  poet  ;  he  aims  at  regenerating 
humanity,  not,  like  Byron  and  Moore,  pulling  it 
down.  They  say  he  is  but  a  boy,  and  this  his  first 
offering;  if  that  be  true,  we  shall  hear  of  him 
again.^' 

History  has  not  transmitted  to  us  the  name 
of  the  excellent  bookseller  of  Lausanne,  but  it  is 
certain  the  he  possessed  more  sense  and  critical 
acumen  than  all  the  English  Reviewers  of  the 
period  put  together. 


N    2 


CHAPTER   X. 

SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN — IN  LONDON — AT  BRACK- 
NELL, EDINBURGH,  WINDSOR— HIS  SEPARA- 
TION   FROM    HARRIET — 1813-1814. 

On  March  9th,  18 13,  Shelley  was  once  more  in 
Dublin.  He  had  suddenly  left  Tanyralt,  borrow- 
ing ;^20  from  Hookham  for  the  purpose,  in 
consequence  of  a  strange  adventure  which  has 
much  exercised  the  minds  of  his  biographers.  On 
the  night  of  February  26th,  a  night  of  storm 
and  rain,  his  assassination  had  been  attempted 
under  highly  mysterious  and  improbable  circum- 
stances. Most  of  Shelley's  biographers  are  of 
opinion  that  the  nocturnal  attack  was  but  a 
figment  of  his  imagination,  one  of  those  halluci- 
nations which,  according  to  Peacock,  would  be  best 
treated  by  "  three  well-peppered  mutton  chops.' 
But  the  details  furnished  by  numerous  extant 
letters  are  too  circumstantial  to  admit  of  such  an 
explanation.  Equally  inadmissible  is  the  theory 
of  his  enemies  that  he  himself  had  invented  the 
story  to  facilitate  his  departure  without  paying 
his  debts.  However  this  may  be,  Shelley  left 
Tanyralt  in  all  haste  for  Dublin,  where  Jack 
Lawless  received  him  with  open  arms. 

Hogg,  on  learning  the  abrupt  departure  of  the 
poet,  relinquished  his  promised  visit  to  Tanyralt 
and  followed  his  friend  to  Dublin.    But  on  arriving 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  i8i 

at  Shelley's  address  in  Cuffe  Street,  he  learned 
from  Mr.  Lawless,  the  owner  of  the  house,  that 
his  lately-arrived  guests  had  taken  flight  for 
Killarney.  Hogg,  after  inspecting  the  Irish  capital, 
took  his  way  back  philosophically  enough  to 
London,  where  he  was  joined  by  Shelley  a  few 
days  later.  The  guardian  angel  had  been  left 
behind  with  the  books. 


"  I  found  Bysshe  and  Harriet,"  writes  Hogg,  "in  a  hotel 
at  the  West  End  ;  they  were  both  well  and  in  good  spirits  ; 
the  lady  was  as  bright,  blooming,  and  placid  as  ever.  They 
expressed  much  regret  at  my  fruitless  expedition,  and  most 
kindly  condoled  with  me.  .  .  .  They  complained  bitterly 
of  the  fatigue,  expense,  and  hideous  improbity  of  their  long 
and  barbarous  course.  Their  wearied  souls  were  brimful 
of  the  recollections  of  discomfort  and  miseries  endured  at 
Killarney  ;  where,  that  they  might  be  more  thoroughly 
wretched,  they  had  occupied  a  cottage  situated  upon  an 
island  in  the  lake.  .  .  . 

"Bysshe  discoursed  with  animation  and  eloquent  astonish- 
ment of  the  perilous  navigation  of  the  lakes  ;  of  sudden 
gusts  and  treacherous  whirlwinds  ;  how  vessels  were 
swamped  and  sunk  in  a  moment  ;  and  he  related  with 
implicit  faith  tales  savouring  somewhat  of  Milesian  exaggera- 
tion and  credulity.  .  .  .  He  made  no  secret  of  his  satis- 
faction" at  having  got  rid  of  Eliza,  "but  often  gave  vent  to 
his  feelings  with  his  accustomed  frankness  and  energy. 
The  good  Harriet  smiled  in  silence,  and  looked  very  sly  ; 
she  did  not  dare  to  express  her  joy,  if  she  really  rejoiced  at 
the  absence  of  her  affectionate  and  tiresome  sister.  .  .  .  The 
deliverance  was  of  brief  duration,  surprisingly  brief,  for  in 
an  incredibly  short  space  of  time  Eliza  reappeared  and 
resumed  her  sovereign  functions.  .  .  .  Harriet  gave  visible 
promise  of  being  about  to  provide  an  heir  for  an  ancient 
and  illustrious  house  ;  and,  like  all  little  women,  she  looked 
very  large  upon  the  occasion.  She  was  in  excellent  voice, 
and  fonder  than  ever  of  reading  aloud  ;  she  promptly  seized 
every  opportunity  of  indulging  her  taste  ;  siie  took  up  the 
first  book  that  came  to  hand  as  soon  as  I  entered  the  room, 
and  the  reading  commenced.  Sir  William  Urummond's 
'Academical  Questions,'  Smith's  'Theory  of  Moral  Senti, 
ments,'  some  of  Bishop  Berkeley's  works,  Southey's  'Chro- 
nicle of  the  Cid,'  had  taken  the  place  of  '  Telemachus,' 
'  Belisarius,'  Volney's  'Ruins,'  and  the  other  works  which 
she  had  formerly  read  to  me." 


ïS2     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

On  reaching  London,  Shelley,  who  had  in- 
curred further  debts  for  his  travelling  expenses, 
endeavoured  in  vain  to  conciliate  his  father  by- 
letter.  After  wasting  many  precious  hours  in 
useless  negotiations  with  Mr.  Timothy  Shelley's 
advisers,  he  removed  from  his  hotel,  which  was 
ill  suited  for  poetical  composition,  and  took  lodg- 
ings in  Half-moon  Street. 

"There  was  a  little  projecting  window,"  says  Hogg,  "  in 
Half-moon  Street,  in  which  Shelley  might  be  seen  from  the 
street  all  day  long,  book  in  hand,  with  lively  gestures  and 
bright  eyes  ;  so  that  Mrs.  Newton  said  he  wanted  only 
a  pan  of  clear  water  and  a  fresh  turf  to  look  like  some 
young  lady's  lark,  hanging  outside  for  air  and  song.  .  .  . 
The  little  room  on  the  first  floor  .  .  .  soon  grew  into  a 
miniature  library  ;  books  were  arranged  in  rows  on  the 
floor,  in  the  recesses  on  each  side  of  the  fireplace,  ...  on 
tables  and  chairs  and  heaped  up  under  tables  in  confusion. 
...  In  one  recess  remained,  but  little  disturbed  by  any 
of  us,  in  a  long  row,  a  Latin  .  .  .  translation  of  the  works  of 
Emmanuel  Kant — the  leaves  uncut." 

Hogg  and  Shelley  had  resumed  their  old 
habits  of  i8il,  walking,  studying,  and  arguing 
together;  and,  as  in  former  times,  Hogg  often 
dined  at  his  friend's  table.  The  nature  of  the 
repast  was  the  only  change,  but  Hogg  had 
little  liking  for  vegetarianism.  He  was  not 
indifferent  to  the  comforts  of  life  ;  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  them,  and  could  not  recall  without 
regret  the  pleasant  Oxford  times,  that  University 
*'  where,"  he  says,  ''  one  was  forced,  whether 
or  no,  to  live  comfortably  in  spite  of  oneself." 
He  thought  all  young  ladies  angelic,  but  never 
more  so  than  when  handing  you  a  large  cup 
of  strong,  good  tea.  Shelley's  frugal  fare  was 
not  to  his  taste;  he  could  not,  like  his  friend, 
rush  into  the  first  baker's  shop  when  hungry, 
buy  a  loaf,  and  eat  it  as  he  strode  along,  with  the 
occasional  addition  of  raisins.  A  sweet  panada, 
that   Shelley  had  learned   how   to    prepare   from 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  183 

a  French  lady,  and  that  he  thought  delicious, 
was  particularly  odious  to  Hogg.  He  deplored  the 
culinary  inexperience  of  the  good  Harriet,  who 
once  in  her  life  had  had  the  opportunity  of  learning 
how  to  make  tea-cakes  from  Mrs.  Southey,  at 
Keswick,  but  had  not  learned,  and  who,  when 
asked  what  was  to  be  for  dinner,  would  reply: 
"Whatever  you  please." 

"  Once,''  says  Hogg,  "  I  had  dropped  a  word,  a  hint 
about  a  pudding.  'A  pudding,'  Bysshe  said  dogmatically, 
*is  a  prejudice.'  I  have  wished  that  the  converse  of  the 
proposition  were  true,  and  that  a  prejudice  was  a  pudding, 
and  then,  according  to  the  judgment  of  my  more  en- 
lightened young  friends,  I  should  never  have  been  without 
one.  .  .  .  Our  only  resource  against  absolute  starvation  was 
tea."* 

Hogg  endeavoured,  though  vainly,  to  intro- 
duce Shelley  into  his  own  circle — the  official 
world,  the  world  of  fashion,  and  society.  As 
he  was  on  terms  of  friendship  with  the  Countess 
of  Oxford,  one  of  the  leaders  of  fashion,  he 
spoke  to  her  in  warm  praise  of  his  friend,  and  she 
expressed  a  desire  to  make  Shelley's  acquaint- 
ance, but  Shelley  probably  declined  the  honour. 
Hogg  also  wished  to  make  Shelley  acquainted 
with  a  man  who,  at  that  time,  enjoyed  a  great 
reputation  for  eloquence  and  learning,  the  cele- 
brated Dr.  Samuel  Parr,  a  Liberal  divine  (we 
have  had  many  such  in  France  since  that  epoch). -f 
But    this   too    failed,    for    Bysshe    had    not    the 

*  Tea  was  always  Shelley's  favourite  beverage  ;  he  praised 
it  poetically  in  his  Letter  to  Maria  Gisborne,  and  jestingly 
called  himself  in  one  sense  a  tJieist. 

t  Hogg  says  amusingly  with  reference  to  this  subject  : 
"  A  Whig  divine  is  placed  in  a  very  critical  position,  between 
two  fires  ;  he  has  to  try  and  make  his  way,  to  creep  to  the 
paradise  of  a  bishoprick— a  long  and  narrow  bridge,  narrow 
as  the  edge  of  a  razor  ;  he  must  not  compromise  his  ortho- 
doxy on  the  one  hand,  or  his  Liberality  on  the  other." 


i84    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

smallest  inclination  for  the  society  of  a  pedagogue 
wrapped  up  in  his  own  infallibility;  ''to  ask  him 
to  converse  with  a  schoolmaster,  was  like  tell- 
ing him  to  go  back  to  Eton  and  have  a  plea- 
sant chat  with  old  Keate,  or  with  the  Oxford 
bigwigs/' 

Shelley  preferred  the  society  of  ladies  who 
would  learn  from  him,  to  that  of  reverend  divines. 
"  He  was  an  especial  favourite  of  the  fair  sex  ; 
he  was  cherished  as  the  apple  of  beauty's  eye  ; 
he  was  often  called  by  names  of  endearment^ 
such  as  Ariel,  and  Oberon,  and  spoken  of  by 
the  ladies  of  his  acquaintance  as  the  Elfin  King, 
the  King  of  Fairyland,  and  under  other  affec- 
tionate titles.  Elegant  society  was  deemed  to 
be  his  proper  element,  and  to  adorn  it  his  natural 
vocation  ;  to  bring  him  into  this  sphere,  and 
keep  him  in  it,  was  the  anxious  care  of  several 
amiable  and  charming  creatures."  But  this  was 
not  always  easy  of  accomplishment. 

As  capricious  and  elusive  as  a  sylph  or  gnome, 
Shelley  easily  forgot,  in  some  day-dream  or 
poetic  vision,  his  promises  and  engagements. 
"When  he  was  caught,  brought  up  in  custody,  and 
turned  over  to  the  ladies  with  'Behold  your  King  !  ' 
to  be  caressed,  courted,  admired,  and  flattered, 
the  king  of  beauty  and  fancy  would  too  commonly 
bolt,  slip  away,  steal  out,  creep  off"  .  .  .  vanish 
like  a  magician.  Hogg  compares  his  strange 
disappearances  to  those  of  a  goat,  who  is  said 
to  pass  one  hour  of  the  twenty-four  every  day 
in  the  infernal  regions  : 


I  have  sometimes  seen  him  standing'  a  long  while  watch- 
ing a  goat  patiently,  and  following  it,  tor  I  had  related  the 
superstitious  legend  to  him,  and  it  captivated  his  fancy  and 
pleased  him  prodigiously  ;  and  he  would  eye  a  goat,  that 
came  unexpectedly  towards  him,  eagerly,  and  inquire  with 
penetrating  asking  glances,  "  What  news  from  Hades.'" 

if  he  was  in  company  with  two  or  three  young  ladies  at 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  1S5 

bedtime,  they  would  continue  to  sit  with  him,  hearing  him 
and  asking  him  questions.  He  took  no  note  of  time,  and 
never  thought  of  retiring  himseh',  and  the  quiet  hours  of 
night  ghded  away  Hke  moments.  .  .  .  Sometimes  the  con- 
versation was  prolonged  to  cockcrow,  and  terminated  with  a 
walk  and  breakfast.  The  mammas  were  obliged  to  inter- 
vene and  despatch  the  young  Adonis  to  his  bed.  .  .  .  Never 
was  so  potent  a  spell,  so  wonderful  a  charm,  exercised  by 
any  other  individual,  however  gifted.  What  in  the  world  did 
Bysshe  say  to  his  charmed  and  charming  watchwomen  ?  I 
have  often  essayed— perhaps  with  a  profane  hand,  and 
therefore  in  vain — to  raise  the  veil  that  covered  the  face  of 
the  mystical  Isis.  ...  I  have  asked  again  and  again  the 
fair  interlocutresses  for  some  samples  of  the  nightly  dialogues, 
but  I  never  obtained  more  than  general  expressions  of 
vague  delight.  ...  I  have  often  wished  that  a  shorthand 
writer  had  been  placed  behind  a  screen  during  Bysshe's 
nightly  colloquies,  to  catch  and  secure  for  ever  on  paper  a 
philosophical  apocalypse  of  which  the  duration  was  un- 
happily so  transient.  What  a  delightful  and  precious 
appendix  to  an  imperfect  biography  would  the  notes  of  the 
shorthand  writer  afford  ! 

One  day  Hogg  and  Shelley  were  invited  to 
attend  a  conference  of  ladies  zealous  for  the 
emancipation  of  their  sex.  The  subject  of  debate 
was  the  important  question  of  stays.  Hogg  alone 
presented  himself.  On  a  table  covered  with  green 
baize  were  exhibited  plaster  casts,  prints,  etchings, 
and  a  rabbit  cut  open  so  as  to  expose  the  interior, 
including  the  lungs.  The  subject  under  discussion 
was  the  injurious  effect  of  stays  on  women.  The 
lecturer  having  demonstrated  her  thesis  upon  the 
casts,  and  the  rabbit,  and  numerous  exhibits  of 
crooked  shoulders,  curved  spines,  and  contracted 
chests,  addressed  herself  to  Hogg  :  "  Have  I  not 
plainly  proved  that  Providence  did  not  intend  us 
to  wear  stays?"  "I  am  not  very  competent  to 
decide  the  question,^'  replied  Hogg,  "  but  I  am 
fully  convinced,  and  you  have  fully  proved,  that 
Providence  never  intended  a  buck  rabbit  to  wear 
stays."  "Is  it  possible  the  rabbit  is  not  a  doe?" 
said    the   poor  lady,  quite   confounded.     A    long 


i8(3    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

silence  ensued  ;  the  fair  lecturer  was  evidently  per- 
plexed as  to  the  sex  of  her  anatomical  subject. 

When  she  had  recovered  herself,  Shelley  be- 
came the  topic  of  conversation,  the  traitorous 
Shelley  who  had  promised  to  be  present  at  the 
conference  and  had  failed  to  keep  his  word.  The 
fair  lecturer  spoke  of  him  with  animation  and 
enthusiasm  ;  if  he  would  but  speak  out  clearly 
on  the  great,  the  important  subject  of  stays,  the 
decision  of  such  an  intellect  as  his  would  instantly 
close  the  discussion.  Not  another  pair  of  stays 
would  be  bought  or  worn  in  all  Europe  ! 

Shelley  was  beginning  to  found  a  school.  A 
band  of  believers  in  human  perfectibility  and  in 
the  Millennium  were  ready  to  be  his  disciples,  to 
the  great  amusement  of  Hogg,  who  bespoke  for 
his  share  in  the  New  Jerusalem  "  the  first  floor  in 
a  commodious  house  hollowed  out  of  one  huge 
emerald."  To  which  Shelley  replied  sadly  : 
"  You  laugh  at  everything.  I  am  convinced  that 
there  can  be  no  entire  regeneration  of  mankind 
until  drollery  has  disappeared  from  the  world  !  " 

"  Queen  Mab/'  printed  at  the  end  of  May, 
1813,  and  distributed  among  Shelley's  friends,  had 
a  certain  success  in  London.  Hogg  tells  us  that 
strangers  of  both  sexes  forced  their  way  into  the 
Shelleys'  lodgings  to  make  the  acquaintance  of 
the  poet.  Enthusiastic  vegetarians,  religious  re-^ 
formers,  unsuccessful  poets  with  suicidal  mania, 
melancholy  and  dreamy  women,  bores  of  all  sorts, 
intruded  their  presence  and  were  passed  on  to 
Hogg  by  the  poet.  "  It  was  more  than  intrusion, 
it  was  obtrusion,  and  the  word  is  not  strong 
enough.  One  person  would  give  Italian  lessons 
to  Harriet,  another  lessons  in  Hebrew  or  Arabic 
to  Eliza  ;  a  still  greater  number  forced  themselves 
in  without  excuse  or  pretext." 

Among  their  eccentric  and  extraordinary 
visitors  was  a  certain  Knight  of  Malta,  Sir  James 


SHELLEY  LN  DUBLIN.  187 

Lawrence  by  name,  who  had  acquired  celebrity  as 
the  author  of  a  philosophical  novel  entitled  "  The 
History  of  the  Nairs."  This  rose-coloured  tale 
of  India,  "too  rose-coloured,^'  says  Hogg,  "too 
much  like  Tom  Moore's  honey-dew,"  became  a 
rage  with  the  Shelleys  ;  even  Eliza  pronounced  it 
to  be  a  delightful  book.  Shelley  was  greatly 
impressed  by  it,  and  more  fully  convinced  than 
ever  of  the  immorality  of  legal  marriage. 

One  of  Shelley's  most  familiar  haunts  was  the 
house  of  Mr.  Newton,  where  he  was  received  as 
belonging  to  the  family.*  The  author  of  "A 
Return  to  Nature  "  was  not  satisfied  with  leading 
mankind  back  to  Nature  by  the  practice  of  the 
Pythagorean  diet,  but  to  this  he  added  an  Eden- 
like absence  of  attire,  and  carried  it  out  in  his  own 
family. 

"  On  a  Sunday,  in  the  summer,"  writes  Hogg,  "  we  took 
a  walk  together,  wandering  about,  as  usual,  for  a  long  time 
without  plan  or  purpose.  About  five  o'clock  Bysshe  stopped 
suddenly  at  the  door  of  a  house  in  a  fashionable  street, 
ascended  the  steps  hastily,  and  delivered  one  of  his  superb 
bravura  knocks. 

"  '  What  are  we  going  to  do  here  ?  ' 

"'  It  is  here  we  dine.' 

"He  placed  me  before  him,  that  I  might  enter  first,  as 
the  stranger;  the  door  was  thrown  wide  open,  and  a  strange 
spectacle  presented  itself.  There  were  five  naked  figures  in 
the  passage  hastening  10  meet  us.  The  first  was  a  boy  of 
twelve  years,  the  last  a  little  girl  of  five  ;  the  other  three 
children,  the  two  eldest  of  them  being  girls,  were  of  inter- 
mediate ages,  betweea  the  two  extremes.  As  soon  as  they 
saw  me,  they  uttered  a  piercing  cry,  turned  round,  and  ran 


*  Mrs.  Newton's  daughter  says  :  "My  mother,  who  was 
uncommonly  musical  (indeed,  as  Dussek  said  himself,  his 
most  gifted  and  best  pupil),  often  passed  her  evenings  playing 
with  two  of  the  first-rate  musicians  in  London,  viz.,  Solomon 
and  another.  Dear  Shelley,  instead  of  listening  to  the  trios, 
would  take  us  children  into  a  corner,  and  there  in  a  low  and 
sepulchral  voice  tell  us  stories  of  ghosts  and  goblins  to  which 
we  listened  with  fixed  inteiest  and  attention." 


l88     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

wildly  upstairs,  screaming  aloud.  The  stairs  presented  the 
appearance  of  Jacob's  Ladder,  with  the  angels  ascending  it,, 
except  that  they  had  no  wings,  and  they  moved  faster  and 
made  more  noise  than  the  ordinary  representations  of  the 
Patriarch's  vision  indicate.  From  the  window  of  the  nursery 
at  the  top  of  the  house  the  children  had  seen  the  beloved 
Shelley — had  scampered  downstairs  in  single  file  to  welcome 
him  ;  me,  the  kill-joy,  they  had  not  observed.  I  was  presented 
to  a  truly  elegant  family,  and  I  found  everything  in  the  best 
taste,  and  was  highly  gratified  with  my  reception,  and  with 
the  estimable  acquisition  to  the  number  of  my  friends. 
Nothing  was  said  about  the  first  strange  salutation,  nor  did 
I  venture  to  inquire  what  it  signified.  After  dinner,  Bysshe 
asked  why  the  children  did  not  come  into  the  room  to  the 
dessert,  as  usual.  The  lady  of  the  house  coloured  sliohtly, 
and  said  Shelley  should  see  them  by-and-by,  in  the  nursery, 
but  they  did  not  dare  to  show  themselves  in  the  dining-room. 
They  were  all  too  much  ashamed  at  having  been  seen,  as  they 
were,  so  unexpectedly,  by  a  stranger  !  Nothing  more  tran- 
spired to  clear  up  the  mystery  of  their  nudity.  At  subsequent 
visits,  the  whole  system  was  unfolded.  ...  In  order  to  pre- 
pare mankind  for  the  happy  impending  restoration  of  perfect 
and  universal  nudity,  children  ought  to  be  accustomed  at  an 
early  age  to  be,  at  least  occasionally,  naked.  .  .  .  The 
mistress  of  the  family  assured  us  that  she  frequently  re- 
mained for  hours  without  her  clothes,  and  derived  much 
advantage  from  the  complete  exposure  to  the  air.  She 
never  seemed  to  have  much  the  matter  with  her  ;  and  in 
imaginative  persons  fancy  sways  their  feelings  and  con- 
victions. '  I  rose  early  this  morning,  and  having  locked 
myself  into  my  dressing-room,  or  undressing-room,  I  re- 
mained for  three  hours  stark-naked.  I  am  all  the  better  for 
it,  I  assure  you  ;  I  always  am.  I  feel  so  innocent  during  the 
rest  of  the  day!'  ...  I  gained  some  credit  by  com- 
municating that  I  had  sometimes  nakedised,  under  the 
authority  and  by  the  advice  of  the  celebrated  Dr.  Franklin, 
who  wrote  with  earnestness  in  commendation  of  air-baths, 
for  so  he  called  and  esteemed  the  remaining  naked  for  some 
hours  in  the  early  morning.  ■  .  .  Except  on  my  first  visit,  the 
dear  children  never  appeared  naked  before  me  ;  before 
Bysshe  they  often  did.  It  is  for  his  credit's  sake  that  I  state 
it.  I  was  of  the  earth,  earthy  ;  he  was  of  the  heaven, 
heavenly  ;^I  was  a  worldling  ;  he  had  already  returned  to 
Nature,  or  rather  he  had  never  quitted  her.  He  was  a  pure 
spirit,  in  the  Divine  likeness  of  the  Archangel  Gabriel  ;  the 
peace-bieathing,  lily-bearing  annunciator.  Whether  the 
charming  lady  might  not,  without  tarnish  or  discredit,  have 
appeared  before  him  robed  only  in  her  innocency,  as  she  was 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  189 

wont  to  sit  during'  the  early  mornino^  Iiours,  I  will  not  presume 
to  determine  ;  it  is,  at  all  ev^ents,  certain  that  she  never  did  so." 

At  the  Newtons'  Shelley  also  made  the 
acquaintance  of  a  lady  who  for  a  time  pro- 
foundly influenced  bis  life  and  intellect  :  this 
was  Madame  de  Boinville,  Mrs.  Newton's  sister. 
They  were  the  daughters  of  Mr.  Collins,  a  wealthy 
planter  at  St.  Vincent,  and  a  staunch  admirer 
of  the  new  France.  Madame  de  Boinville  had 
adopted  and  even  exceeded  the  Liberal  views 
of  her  father,  wearing  a  red  sash,  and  calling 
herself  a  child  of  the  Revolution.  Among  the 
Constitutional  émigrés  who  frequented  her  father's 
house  she  had  noticed  one  who,  although  still  a 
young  man,  had  played  no  insignificant  part  in 
the  early  days  of  the  Revolution.  M.  de  Boin- 
ville, who  had  been  formerly  diffrinier-general,  and 
a  friend  of  La  Fayette  and  André  Chénier,  was 
reduced  to  poverty  by  the  emigration.  He  won 
Ihe  affections  of  the  young  Republican  lady,  and 
they  had  been  married  by  the  Gretna  Green  black- 
smith, previous  to  a  more  formal  ceremony.  Under 
the  Consulate,  M.  de  Boinville  returned  to  France. 
Madame  de  Boinville  accompanied  him,  and 
suffered  much  annoyance  from  the  Imperial  police. 
It  is  even  related  that,  on  the  occasion  of  one  of 
her  journeys  between  Paris  and  London,  she  was 
taken  prisoner  at  the  Hague,  but  her  jailer  was  so 
impressed  by  her  beauty  that  he  allowed  her  to 
escape.  M.  de  Boinville  accepted  service  under 
Napoleon,  and  received  a  high  appointment  in  the 
Commissariat  of  the  Grand  Army.  He  died  at 
Wilna  in  1813.  His  widow  was  still  suffering  from 
the  shock  of  bereavement  when  she  first  became 
acquainted  with  Shelley.  Her  troubled  life  had 
early  whitened  her  hair,*  and  the  contrast  between 

*  The  above  sketch  of  the  Boinvilles  is  taken  from  Mr. 
Dowden,  who  derives  it  from  Mr.  Thomas  Constable's 
"Memoir  of  the  Rev.  C.  A.  Chastel  de  Boinville." 


I90    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

her  snow-white  locks  and  her  youthful  counte- 
nance reminded  Shelley  of  the  mysterious  spinner 
in  Southey's  ''  Thalaba/'  Maimuna,  by  whose 
name  he  used  to  call  her  : 

Her  face  was  as  a  damsers  face, 
And  yet  her  hair  was  gray. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  such  a  woman  must 
have  influenced  Shelley. 

The  recollection  of  the  enchantress  lasted  much 
longer  than  his  intimacy  with  her  in  London.  In 
1 8 19  he  wrote  from  Rome  to  his  friend  Peacock 
concerning  Madame  de  Boinville  and  her  daughter 
Cornelia  : 

So  you  know  the  Boinvilles  ?  I  could  not  help  con- 
sidering Mrs.  B.,  when  I  knew  her,  as  the  most  admirable 
specimen  of  a  human  being  I  had  ever  seen.  Nothing 
earthly  ever  appeared  to  me  more  perfect  than  her  character 
and  manners.  It  is  improbable  that  I  shall  ever  meet 
again  the  person  whom  I  so  much  esteemed,  and  still 
admire.  I  wish,  however,  that  when  you  see  her,  you  would 
tell  her  that  I  have  not  forgot!  en  her,  nor  any  of  the  amiable 
circle  once  assembled  round  her.  .  .  .  Cornelia,  though 
so  young  when  I  saw  her,  gave  indications  of  her  mother's 
excellencies  ;  and  certainly  less  fascinating,  is,  I  doubt  not, 
ecjually  amiable  and  more  sincere.  It  was  hardly  possible 
for  a  person,  of  the  extreme  subtlety  and  delicacy  of  Mrs. 
Boinville's  understanding  and  affections,  to  be  quite  sincere 
and  constant. 

Besides  the  charm  of  their  delightful  com- 
panionship, Shelley's  friends  furnished  him  with 
a  new  source  of  intellectual  and  literary  enjoy- 
ment; Mrs.  Boinville  and  her  daughter  Cornelia 
initiated  him  into  the  language  of  Dante  and 
Tasso,  and,  under  their  guidance,  he  threw  himself 
into  the  study  of  Italian  with  his  habitual  ardour 
for  any  intellectual  pursuit.  With  his  friend  Hogg 
he  read  "  La  Gerusalemme  Liberata.'^ 

"  With  mingled  feelings,"  says  the  latter,  "  of  pleasure 
and  regret  we  both  quitted  the  graceful,  tender,  pious  epic» 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLLY.  191 

being  in  our  hearts  more  than  half  Crusaders,  and  not 
altogether  indisposed  to  enlist  under  the  consecrated  banners 
of  God  trey." 

Ariosto  fascinated  Shelley  ;  he  eagerly  de- 
voured the  "Orlando  Furioso/'  returning-  to  it  con- 
stantly, reading  it  again  and  again  ;  while  Hogg 
was  progressing  slowly  and  methodically  with  the 
aid  of  grammar  and  dictionary,  Shelley  read  the 
forty-four  cantos  of  the  "  Orlando"  several  times. 
Dante  was  postponed.  A  melancholy  female 
friend,  who  found  consolation  for  her  imaginary 
sufferings  only  in  the  poetry  of  Petrarch,  read 
with  Shelley  the  "  Canzoni  "  of  that  great  master 
of  lyric  verse  ;  he  drank  with  delight  at  the 
pure  and  ideal  spring,  while  Hogg,  to  the  horror 
of  the  lady  and  her  disciple,  ridiculed  the  platonic 
passion  of  the  stout  canon  of  Padua,  who  sang 
of  love  and  kissed  his  maid-servant  between  a 
good  breakfast  and  a  better  dinner. 

At  the  end  of  June,  181 3,  a  babe  was  born 
to  Shelley,  a  little  daughter,  to  whom  he  gave 
the  name  of  lanthe  Elizabeth.  Hogg  gives  us 
to  understand  that  in  Harriet's  composition  there 
was  more  of  vanity  and  egotism  than  of  maternal 
affection  : 

I  often  asked  Harriet  to  let  me  see  her  little  girl,  but  she 
always  made  some  excuse.  She  was  asleep,  being  dressed, 
or  had  gone  out,  or  was  unwell.  The  child  had  some 
blemish,  though  not  a  considerable  one,  in  one  of  her  eyes  ; 
and  this,  I  believe,  was  the  true  and  only  reason  why  her 
mother  did  not  choose  to  exhibit  her.  She  could  not  bear, 
herself  a  beauty,  that  I  should  know  (such  was  her  weakness) 
that  one  so  nearly  connected  with  herself  was  not  perfectly 
beautiiui. 

Shortly  afterwards  it  became  necessary  to 
operate  on  the  little  lanthe  for  a  tumour. 
Against  the  wish  of  the  surgeon,  Harriet  insisted 
on  being  present,  and  watched  the  progress  of 
the   operation   without   a   sign  of  emotion.     The 


192    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

surgeon  declared  subsequently  that  he  had  never 
met  a  woman  like  her,  that  she  must  have  been 
altogether  without  feeling.* 

Hogg  says  that  Shelley  had  no  affection  for  his 
child  and  took  no  interest  in  her  ;  but  Peacock, 
who  is  a 'faithful  witness  to  that  epoch  in  the 
poet's  life,  gives  us  a  different  and  more  credible 
account.  "  He  was  extremely  fond  of  his  child/' 
he  writes,  "and  would  walk  up  and  down  a  room 
with  it  in  his  arms  for  a  long  time  together^ 
singing  to  it  a  monotonous  melody  of  his  own 
making,  which  ran  on  the  repetition  of  a  word 
of  his  own  making.  His  song  was  'Yahmani, 
Yâhmani,  Yâhmani,  Yâhmani  ^  ....  it  pleased 
the  child,  and  lulled  it  when  it  was  fretful  ;  .  .  .  . 
he  was  pre-eminently  an  affectionate  father."  Mr. 
Dowden  has  transcribed  for  us  a  precious  record 
of  Shelley's  love  for  his  little  lanthe,  an  un- 
published sonnet,  written  in  September,  1813, 
three  months  after  her  birth  : 

TO  lANTHE. 

I  love  thee,  Baby,  for  thine  own  sweet  sake  : 
Those  azure  eyes,  that  faintly  dimpled  cheek, 
Thy  tender  frame  so  eloquently  weak. 
Love  in  the  sternest  heart  of  hate  might  wake  ; 
But  more,  when  o'er  thy  fitful  slumber  bending, 
Thy  mother  folds  thee  to  her  wakeful  heart, 
"Whilst  love  and  pity  in  her  glances  blending 
All  that  thy  passive  eyes  can  feel  impart  ; 
More,  when  some  feeble  lineaments  of  her 
Who  bore  thy  weight  beneath  her  spotless  bosom, 
As  with  deep  love  I  read  thy  face,  recur  ; 
More  dear  art  thou,  O  fair  and  fragile  blossom, 
Dearest  when  most  thy  tender  trails  express 
The  image  of  thy  mothers  loveliness. 

It  was  then  (July,  18 13)  that,  on  his  mothers 
invitation,    and   in   the  absence   of  Mr.  Timothy 

*  lanthe  Shelley  married  Mr.  Esdaile,  and  died  in  1876. 
Mr,  Dowden  defends  Haniet  from  Hogg's  censure. 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  193 

Shelley  and  his  sisters,  Shelley  saw  his  birth- 
place, Field  Place,  for  the  last  time.  He  stayed 
there  for  some  days  incognito,  under  the  name 
of  Captain  Jones,  wearing,  when  out  of  doors, 
the  uniform  of  a  young  officer  who  was  then 
quartered  at  Horsham.  Captain  Kennedy  has  left 
us  in  a  long  letter  his  impressions  of  the  poet  : 

...  I  found  him  with  his  mother  and  two  elder  sisters 
in  a  small  room  off  the  drawing-room,  which  they  had  named 
Confusion  Hall.  He  received  me  with  frankness  and  kindli- 
ness, as  if  he  had  known  me  from  childhood,  and  at  once 
won  my  heart.  .  .  .  The  generosity  of  his  disposition  and 
utter  unselfishness  imposed  upon  him  the  necessity  of  strict 
self-denial  in  personal  comforts.  Consequently  he  was 
obliged  to  be  most  economical  in  his  dress.  He  one  day 
asked  us  how  we  liked  his  coat,  the  only  one  he  had  broughi 
with  him.  We  said  it  was  very  nice  ;  it  looked  as  if  new. 
"Well,"  said  he,  "it  is  an  old  black  coat  which  I  have  had 
done  up,  and  smartened  with  metal  buttons  and  a  velvet 
collar."  .  .  .  He  discoursed  with  eloquence  and  enthusiasm. 
He  said  that  he  once  thought  the  surrounding-  atmosphere 
was  peopled  with  the  spirits  of  the  departed. 

He  read  poetry  with  great  emphasis  and  solemnity  ;  one 
evening  he  read  aloud  to  us  a  translation  of  one  of  Goethe's 
poems,  and  at  this  day  I  think  I  hear  him.  In  music  he 
seemed  to  delight  as  a  medium  of  association  ;  the  tunes 
which  had  been  favourites  in  boyhood  charmed  him.  There 
was  one,  which  he  played  several  times  on  the  piano  w^tli 
one  hand,  which  seemed  to  absorb  him  ;  it  was  an  ex- 
ceedingly simple  air,  which  I  understand  his  earliest  lo\e 
(Harriet  Grove)  was  wont  to  play  for  him.  He  soon  Iclt  us, 
and  1  never  saw  him  after,  but  1  can  never  forget  him.  He 
was  an  amiable,  gentle  being. 

Shortly  before  this  visit  Shelley  had  left 
London,  in  order  to  establish  himself  less  ex- 
pensively in  a  little  cottage  called  High  Elms. 
It  was  situated  at  Bracknell,  in  Berkshire,  not 
far  from  Eton,  and  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
Newtons  and  ''Maimuna";  and  to  High  Elms 
came  with  him   Thomas   Love   Peacock,*   one   of 

*  Both  as  poet  and  satirical  novelist,  Peacock  deserves 
attention,   and    Shelley's   high   opinion   of  his   talents    and 

O 


194    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE   POET. 

his  most  beloved  friends,  and  worthy,  both  in 
intellect  and  heart,  of  Shelley's  affection.  Their 
intimacy  dated  from  the  previous  year,  at  Cwm 
Elan,  became  closer  still  at  Bracknell,  and  lasted 
without  a  cloud  unto  the  end.  At  a  time  when 
Peacock  was  in  difficulties  Shelley  made  him  an 
allowance  of  ^î^ioo  a  year,  and  continued  to  express 
tlie  warmest  feelings  of  friendship  for  him,  even 
after  his  own  departure  from  England. 

Shelley  came  of  age  while  at  Bracknell.  His 
pecuniary  condition  continued  to  be  deplorable  ; 
there  was  an  accumulation  of  debts,  and  even 
a  risk  of  arrest  as  an  insolvent  debtor,  which 
his  father  privately  averted.  In  October,  how- 
ever, he  found  himself  compelled  to  resort  to 
post-obit  bonds  in   order  to   raise  money. 

But  while  awaiting  the  settlement  of  his  affairs, 
he  resolved  to  revisit  the  scenes  which  had  wit- 
nessed the  early  days  of  his  union  with  Harriet  ; 
his  friends  at  Keswick,*  the  Calverts,  and  Edin- 
burgh. Peacock  was  of  the  party.  Although 
Shelley  did  not  find  in  Peacock  the  perfect 
sympathy  of  ideas  and  aspirations  that  he  would 
have  desired,  he  recognised  an  agreeable  and 
intellectual  companion  in  his  new  friend,  and 
also  a  scholar  who  was  neither  superstitious  nor 
dogmatical. 

He  returned  to  London  in  December,  and 
soon  afterwards  hired  a  furnished  house  at 
Windsor,  at  no  great  distance  from  Bracknell 
and  the  Boinvilles.  Throughout  these  incessant 
wanderings  he  continued  to  devote  himself  to 
varied   and  serious  study.     He  read  Tacitus,   the 

character  is  not  his  least  claim  to  posthumous  appreciation. 
There  is  an  excellent  article  on  Peacock  in  the  Bfiiish  Review 
for  January,  1874. 

*  Just  at  this  time  Southey  had  accepted  the  Poet- 
Laureateship,  and  was  accused  by  the  Exa/nùier  and  other 
Liberal  journals  of  apostasy. 


SHELLEY  LN  DUBLIN.  195 

philosophical  works  of  Cicero,  "  one  of  the  finest 
characters  the  world  has  ever  produced/'  La 
Place's  "  System  of  the  World,"  and  Grenville's 
Homer,  in  two  Russia-bound  volumes. 

"  It  would  be  a  curious  problem,"  says  Hogg,  "  to  calculate 
how  many  times  he  read  the  whole  through.  He  devoured 
in  silence  .  .  .  often  by  firelight  ,  .  .  and  he  would  read  some 
sublime  passage  aloud,  if  there  was  any  one  at  hand  to  listen, 
with  extreme  rapidity  and  animation  .  .  .  nor  would  he 
cease  until  he  reached  the  end  of  the  book,  and  then, 
closing  it  .  .  .  and  lifting  up  his  eyes  to  the  ceiling,  he  ex- 
claimed with  heartfelt  pleasure,  '  Hah  !  '  remaining  lor  some 
minutes  in  an  attitude  of  veneration,  wholly  absorbed  in 
pleasure  and  admiration." 

The  outcome  of  his  philosophical  studies  in 
1813,  was  a  remarkable  little  book  written  in  the 
form  of  a  dialogue  between  a  Deist  and  a 
Christian,  and  entitled,  "  A  Refutation  of  Deism," 
Avhich  appeared  early  in  18 14.  Shelley  very 
subtly  places  the  refutation  of  Christianity  in  the 
mouth  of  the  Deist,  and  that  of  Deism  in  the 
mouth  of  the  Christian  ;  thetheosophist  demolishes 
Christianity,  whereas  the  Christian  Euscbius,  by 
proving  that  there  is  no  middle  position  between 
Atheism  and  Christianity,  is  merely  a  disguised 
Atheist  demolishing  Deism.  While  thus  develop- 
ing the  arguments  in  the  notes  to  "  Queen  Mab," 
the  dialogue  (which,  moreover,  was  only  addressed 
to  the  elect  few)  shows  a  considerable  advance 
both  in  style  and  thought.  The  latter  is  more 
elevated,  more  self-sustained,  stronger,  less 
aggressive,  and  less  declamatory.  Mr.  Dowden 
points  out  as  particularly  noteworthy,  Shelley's 
criticism  of  the  argument  from  Design  in  Nature. 
He  brings  us  to  this  conclusion  :  "  That  our 
ignorance  alone  incapacitates  us  from  referring 
every  phenomenon,  however  unusual,  minute,  or 
complex,  to  the  laws  of  motion  and  the  properties 
of  matter;   and  it  is  an  egregious  offence  against 

o  2 


195     SHELLEY— THE   MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

the  first  principles  of  reason,  to  suppose  an 
ini material  creator  of  the  world,  in  quo  omnia 
■moventiir  sed  sine  iniituâ  passio7ie,  which  is  equally 
a  superfluous  hypothesis  in  the  mechanical 
philosophy  of  Newton,  and  an  useless  excrescence 
on  the  inductive  logic  of  Bacon." 

Weary  of  incessant  wanderings,  and  pro- 
bably in  accordance  with  the  wise  counsels  of 
Maimuna,*  Shelley  seemed  inclined  to  rest  for 
a  time,  while  continuing  to  urge  an  arrangement 
on  hi^  father,  which  would  relieve  him  from 
his  pecuniary  embarrassments.  He  enjoyed  the 
desired  rest  in  long  visits  to  his  Bracknell  friends 
in  the  early  part  of  1814. 

On  resj^ming  his  momentarily  interrupted 
correspondence  with  Hogg,  he  writes  to  him 
from  Bracknell  on  March   i6th: 

I  have  been  staying  with  Mrs.  Boinville  for  the  last 
month.  I  have  escaped,  in  the  society  of  all  that  philosophy 
and  friendship  combined,  from  the  dismaying  solitude  of 
myself.  They  have  revived  in  my  heart  the  expiring  flame 
of  life.  I  have  felt  myself  translated  to  a  paradise,  which 
has  nothing  of  mortality  but  its  transitoriness  ;  my  heart 
sickens  at  the  view  of  that  necessity,  which  will  cjuickly 
divide  me  froan  the  delightful  tranquillity  of  this  happy  home, 
for  it  has  become  my  home.  The  trees,  the  bridge,  the 
minutest  objects,  have  already  a  place  in  my  aftections. 

My  friend,  you  are  happier  than  I.  You  have  the 
pleasures  as  well  as  the  pains  of  sensibility.  I  have  sunk 
into  a  premature  old  age  of  exhaustion,  which  renders  me 
dead  to  everything  but  the  unenviable  capacity  of  indulging 
the  vanity  of  hope,  and  a  terrible  susceptibility  to  objects  of 
disgust  and  hatred. 

My  temporal  concerns  are  slowly  rectifying  themselves  ; 
I  am  astonished  at  my  own  indifference  to  their  event.     I 

*  "  Seriously,"  she  writes  to  Hogg  in  March,  1814,  "  I 
think  his  mind  and  body  want  rest.  His  journeys  after  what 
he  has  never  found  have  racked  his  purse  and  his  tranquillity. 
He  is  resolved  to  take  a  little  care  of  the  former  in  pity  to  the 
latter,  which  I  applaud,  and  shall  second  vi\\.\\  all  my  might. 
.  .  .  He  is  seeking  a  house  close  to  us.  .  .  ." 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  197 

live  here  like  the  insect  that  sports  in  a  transient  sunbeam, 
which  the  next  cloud  shall  obscure  for  ever.  I  am  much 
changed  from  what  I  was.  I  look  with  regret  to  our  happy- 
evenings  at  Oxford,  and  with  wonder  at  the  hopes  which  in 
the  excess  of  my  madness  I  there  encouraged.  Burns  says, 
you  know  : 

"  Pleasures  are  like  poppies  spread  : 
You  seize  the  flower — the  bloom  is  fled  ; 
Or,  like  the  snow,  falls  in  the  river, 
A  moment  white — then  lost  for  ever." 

Ehza  is  still  with  us — not  here,  but  will  be  with  me  when 
the  infinite  malice  of  destiny  forces  me  to  depart.  I  am  now 
but  little  inclined  to  contest  this  point.  I  certainly  hate  her 
with  all  my  heart  and  soul.  It  is  a  sight  which  awakens  an 
inexpressible  sensation  of  disgust  and  horror,  to  see  her 
caress  my  poor  little  lanthe,  in  whom  I  may  hereafter  find 
the  consolation  of  sympathy.  I  sometimes  feel  faint  with 
the  fatigue  of  checking  the  overflowings  of  my  unbounded 
abhorrence  for  this  miserable  wretch.  But  she  is  no  more 
■than  a  blind  and  loathsome  worm,  that  cannot  see  to  sting. 

I  have  begun  to  learn  Italian  again.  I  am  reading 
Beccaria,  "  Dei  delitti  e  pene."  His  essay  seems  to  contain 
some  excellent  remarks,  though  I  do  not  think  that  it 
deserves  the  reputation  it  has  gained.  Cornelia  assists  me 
in  this  language.  Did  I  not  once  tell  you  that  I  thought  her 
cold  and  reserved?  She  is  the  reverse  of  this,  as  she  is  the 
reverse  of  everything  bad.  She  inherits  all  the  divinity  of 
her  mother. 

What  have  you  written  ?  I  have  been  unable  even  to  write 
a  common  letter.  I  have  forced  myself  to  read  Beccaria,  and 
Dumont's  Bentham.  I  have  sometimes  forgotten  that  I  am 
not  an  inmate  of  this  delightful  home — that  a  time  will  come 
which  will  cast  me  again  into  the  boundless  ocean  of  abhorred 
society. 

I  have  written  nothing  but  one  stanza,  which  has  no 
jneaning,  and  that  I  have  only  written  in  thought  : 

Thy  dewy  looks  sink  in  my  breast  ; 

Thy  gentle  words  stir  poison  there; 
Thou  hast  disturbed  the  only  rest 

That  was  the  portion  of  despair  ! 
Subdued  to  Duty's  hard  control, 

I  could  have  borne  my  wayward  lot  : 
The  chains  that  bind  this  rumed  soul 

Had  cankered  them,  but  crushed  it  not. 

This  is  the  vision  of  a  delirious  and  distempered  dreanij 


198     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

which  passes  away  at  the  cold,  clear  light  of  morning.  ItS' 
surpassing  excellence  and  exquisite  perfections  have  no  more- 
reality  than  the  colour  of  an  autumnal  sunset.     Adieu. 

This  despairing  letter  throws  a  h'ght  on 
the  state  of  Shelley's  mind,  and  prepares  us 
for  the  abrupt  catastrophe  which  was  impending. 
Shelley's  home  had  become  a  hell. 

The  hour  of  parting  was  at  hand.  Ever  since 
the  autumn  of  18 13  serious  differences  of  opinion 
had  caused  a  coolness  between  Shelley  and 
Harriet.  His  sonnet  to  Harriet  on  her  birthday 
in  September  is  very  unlike  that  one  he  had 
addressed  to  her  the  preceding  year.  As  Mr.- 
Dowden,  who  first  published  it,  remarks,  "  there 
is  something  in  it  of  the  strangeness  and  sadness. 
of  sunset,"  and  the  little  rift  in  their  love  is  already 
perceptible  : 

EVENING.     TO    HARRIET. 

O  thou  bright  sun  !  beneath  the  dark  blue  line 

Of  western  distance  that  sublime  descendest, 

And  gleaming  loveher  as  thy  beams  decline, 

Thy  million  hues  to  every  vapour  lendest, 

And  over  cobweb,  lawn,  and  grove,  and  stream 

Sheddest  the  liquid  magic  of  thy  light, 

Till  calm  earth,  with  the  parting  splendour  bright. 

Shows  like  the  vision  of  a  beauteous  dream  ; 

What  gazer  now  with  astronomic  eye 

Could  coldly  count  the  spots  within  thy  sphere  ? 

Such  were  thy  lover,  Harriet,  could  he  fly 

The  thoughts  of  all  that  makes  his  passion  dear, 

And  turning  senseless  from  thy  warm  caress 

Pick  flaws  in  our  close-woven  happiness. 

Dissensions,  sooner  or  later,  were  inevitable  ; 
it  was  in  the  nature  of  things  that  they  should 
occur.  There  was  too  great  an  incompatibility  of 
education,  intellect,  temper,  and  character  in  the 
wedded  pair  for  life  in  common  nof  to  become 
suddenly,  at  a  given  moment,  hateful  and  in- 
tolerable.     Medwin   was   surprised,   not   at   their 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  199 

eventual  separation,  but  that  they  for  so  long  a 
period  "  dragged  a  chain,  of  which  each  link  was 
an  additional  torture."  Far  be  it  from  us  to 
throw  a  stone  at  the  good  Harriet  whom  Hogg  and 
Peacock  have  depicted  in  such  brilliant  colours  ; 
she  paid  dearly,  for  the  thoughtlessness  with  which 
she  threw  herself  into  the  poet's  arms;  while 
Shelley's  fault  had  been  that  of  entering  too 
lightly  on  so  great  a  venture,  and  of  mistaking 
his  own  generous  sympathy  for  love.  When  on 
the  point  of  uniting  himself  to  Harriet  he  had 
yielded  too  easily  to  the  impulse  of  his  heart,  in 
spite  of  reason,  which  called  aloud  : 

Hear  it  not,  Percy,  for  it  is  a  knell 
That  summons  thee  to  heaven  or  to  hell. 

And  hell  had  come.  He  had  doubtless  persuaded 
himself  that,  by  the  mild  and  eloquent  teaching 
of  love,  he  should  bestow  intellect  and  soul  on  the 
beautiful  doll,  and  raise  her  to  his  own  level  ;  but 
he  had  failed.  He  had  learnt  that  she  could  not 
rise  to  his  height  ;  that  she  was  deficient  in  the 
refinement  and  delicacy  he  would  fain  have  found 
in  the  companion  of  his  life  ;  that  her  heart  was 
narrow  and  cold,  inaccessible  to  the  great  passions 
that  filled  his  own,  and  incapable  of  even  faintly 
realising  the  ideal  he  had  made  to  himself  of  love. 
In  a  few  terrible  words  he  has  summed  up  his 
grievances  against  Harriet  : 

Every  one  must  know  that  the  partner  of  my  life  should 
be  one  who  can  feel  poetry  and  understand  philosophy. 
Harriet  is  a  noble  animal,  but  she  can  do  neither. 

In  place  of  a  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  or  even 
of  a  Madame  Boinville,  he  had  found  in  Harriet  a 
mere  woman,  more  addicted  to  feminine  vanity, 
and  to  the  comforts  and  luxuries  of  life,  than  to 
the  ideal  delights  of  poetry  and  philanthropy. 
For  a  time,  indeed,  she  had  striven  to  kindle  the 


ZGO    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

sacred  fire,  to  stammer  the  mystic  diction  of 
philosophy  ;  but  the  great  words  sounded  untrue 
from  her  lovely  lips,  and  seemed  to  be  accom- 
panied by  a  smile  of  bright  incredulity.  She  had 
allowed  herself  to  join  in  Peacock's  laugh  at 
Shelley  for  the  enthusiasm  with  which  he  held 
the  impracticable  theories  that  he  believed  to  be 
of  the  highest  importance  to  the  happiness  and 
perfectibility  of  the  human  race.  She  had  ridi- 
culed the  humanitarian  and  French  sentimentality 
that  reigned  in  Maimuna's  circle,  and  her  heart, 
albeit  not  a  warm  one,  had  felt  a  sting  of  jealousy 
at  the  place  held  by  that  enchantress  in  her 
husband's  affections.  In  or  before  the  first  mo- 
ments of  motherhood,  Harriet  had  seen  the  mirage 
of  earlier  days  fade  away,  and  had  found  herself 
among  the  realities  of  daily  life.  She  no  longer 
read  aloud,  and  Shelley  ceased  to  take  any  interest 
in  her  studies.  If  we  may  trust  Peacock,  the 
disputes  between  the  pair  arose  principally  from 
two  causes  :  first,  that  Harriet  had  delegated  her 
tenderest  office  towards  her  babe  to  a  hired  nurse  ; 
and,  secondly,  that  she  persisted  in  retaining  with 
her  the  guardian  angel,  her  sister  Eliza,  whom 
Shelley  regarded  with  abhorrence.  "  I  always 
thought,"  he  says, "that  if  Harriet  had  suckled  her 
own  child,  and  if  her  sister  had  not  lived  with 
them,  their  union  would  have  lasted  much  longer." 
Yet,  however  strained  was  the  situation, 
Shelley,  from  a  sense  of  duty,  resigned  himself, 
though  not  without  a  hard  struggle,  to  bear  a 
burden  which  had  become  the  more  intolerable 
from  comparison  with  the  ideal  happiness  he 
enjoyed  at  Bracknell.  He  was  so  far  from 
thinking  of  separation  from  Harriet,  that  four 
days  after  writing  the  letter  to  Hogg  that  we 
have  given  above,  he  renewed  the  ceremony  of 
marriage  with  her  according  to  the  Anglican 
rite  at  the  parish  church  of  St.  George.     Harriet 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  20 r 

was  again  pregnant,  and  Shelley,  for  the  sake 
of  a  possible  son  and  heir,  was  anxious  to  ratify 
the  Edinburgh  marriage. 

In  April  the  poet  was  once  more  at  Brack- 
nell. "Shelley,"  wrote  Mrs.  Boinville  to  Hogg 
(April  1 8th),  "is  again  a  widower  ;  his  beauteous 
half  went  to  town  on  Thursday  with  Miss 
Westbrook,  who  is  gone  to  live,  I  believe,  at 
Southampton.-'^ 

But  the  greater  Shelley's  delight  in  the 
society  at  Bracknell,  the  more  painful  was  the 
return  to  his  silent  and  desolate  hearth  ;  and 
in  this  melancholy  frame  of  mind  he  wrote,  on 
leaving  the  Boinvilles,  the  following  mournful 
stanzas  : 

Away  !  the  moor  is  dark  beneath  the  moon, 
Rapid  clouds  have  drunk  the  last  pale  beam  of  even  ; 
Away  !  the  gathering  winds  will  call  the  darkness  soon, 
And    profoundest    midnight    shroud   the   serene    lights   of 

heaven. 
Pause  not  ;  the  time  is  past  !     Every  voice  cries,  ''  Away  !  " 
Tempt  not  with  one  last  glance  thy  friend's  ungentle  mood  ; 
Thy  lover's  eye,  so  glazed  and  cold,  dares   not  entreat  thy 

stay  ; 
Duty  and  dereliction  guide  thee  back  to  solitude. 

He  carried  with  him  the  ineffaceable  remem- 
brance of  that  house,  and  heath,  and  garden  of 
Bracknell  ;  and,  above  all,  the  recollection  of  the 
enchantresses  who  dwelt  there,  "  of  the  music  of 
two  voices  and  the  light  of  one  sweet  smile. "^= 

Yet  amid  all  this  despair,  there  was  as  yet 
room  for  hope  ;  if  love  were  dead  in  Harriet's 
heart  the  poet  could  still  appeal  to  her  pity,  and 
implore  her  not  to  condemn  him  to  lose  all  hope. 
In  May,  18 14,  he  addressed  to  her  the  following 
lines,  which   have   been   found,  in  Harriet's    own 

*  Stanzas,  April,  1814. 


202     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

handwriting,    among   a   manuscript   collection    of 
poems  prepared  by  Shelley  for  publication: 

TO   HARRIET. 

Thy  look  of  love  has  power  to  calm 
The  stormiest  passion  of  my  soul  ; 

Thy  gentle  words  are  drops  of  balm 
In  life's  too  bitter  bowl  ; 

No  grief  is  mine  but  that  alone 

These  choicest  blessings  I  have  known. 

Harriet  !  if  all  who  long  to  live 

In  the  mild  sunshine  of  thine  eye, 
That  price  beyond  all  pain  must  give 

Beneath  thy  scorn  to  die 

Then  hear  thy  chosen  own  too  late 
His  heart  most  worthy  of  thy  hate. 

Be  thou,  then,  one  among  mankind 
Whose  heart  is  harder  not  for  state, 

Thou  only  virtuous,  gentle,  kind, 
Amid  a  world  of  hate  ; 

And  by  a  slight  endurance  seal 

A  fellow  being's  lasting  weal. 

For  pale  with  anguish  is  his  cheek  ; 

His  breath  comes  fast,  his  eyes  are  dim  j 
Thy  name  is  struggling  ere  he  speak  ; 

Weak  is  each  trembling  limb. 
In  mercy  let  him  not  endure 
The  misery  of  a  fatal  cure. 

O  trust  for  once  no  erring  guide  ! 

Bid  the  remorseless  feeling  flee  ; 
'Tis  malice,  'tis  revenge,  'tis  pride, 

'Tis  anything  but  thee  ; 
O  deign  a  nobler  pride  to  prove, 
And  pity  if  thou  canst  not  love. 

It  is  probable  this  despairing  appeal  to  Har- 
riet's pity  awakened  no  response  in  her  heart  ; 
and  we  may  believe,  while  allowing  for  the 
natural  exaggeration  of  iiis  wounded  love,  that 
Shelley  regarded  such  hardness  as  an  unpardon- 
able offence.* 

*  Mr.    Dowden    gives   a   curious    proof  of    this    in   the 
variation  of  two  lines  in  the  sixth  stanza  of  the  dedicatioa 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIN.  203 

In  presence  of  such  insensibility  as  this  the 
occasion  seemed  to  have  arisen  for  him  to  apply- 
to  his  own  case  the  principles  he  had  stated  in 
a  note  to  "  Queen  Mab,"  that  marriage  could 
not  indissolubly  unite  two  beings  who  were  not 
made  for  each  other,  and  that  it  became  their 
duty  to  seek  love  and  happiness  in  another  union. 
This  was  the  fatal  aire  of  which  he  speaks  in  the 
stanzas  to  Harriet. 

Since  his  re-marriage  at  St.  George's  he  had 
become  more  intimate  with  Godwin,  whose  em- 
barrassed pecuniary  affairs  had  moved  his  generous 
heart,*  and  he  had  met,  and  been  strangely 
impressed  by  «the  young  daughter  of  Godwin 
and  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  a  beautiful  girl  of 
seventeen,  whose  pure,  pale  face  shone  with 
intelligence,  sensibility,  and  earnestness,  and  in 
whom  was  mingled  her  father's  clearness  of  in- 
tellect and  firm  quietude,  with  her  mother's  ardour 
of  imagination  and  feeling.     Shelley  was  dazzled. 

If  we  may  trust  Peacock,  who  was  Shelley's 
chief  friend  at  the  time,  his  passion  for  Mary  was 
like  a  thunderbolt  : 

"Nothing  that  I  ever  read  in  tale  or  history,"  writes  he, 
"could  present  a  more  striking  image  of  a  sudden,  violent, 
irresistible  passion,  than  that  under  which  I  found  him 
labouring,  when  at  his  invitation  I  came  back  to  London 
from  the  country.  His  new  passion  was'  to  be  read  m 
his  looks,  his  red  and  inflamed  eyes,  his  disordered  hair 


of  "Laon  and  Cythna."     Tiicoc  lines  which  now  stand  in 

the  primed  te.xt, 

Yet  never  found  I  one  not  false  to  mc, 

Hard  hearts  and  cold  like  weights  of  icy  stone  ! 

were  originally  written  with  allusion  to  his  cousin,  Harriet 

Grove,  and  to  his  wife  Harriet  : 

One  whom  I  found  was  dear  but  false  to  me, 
Tlie  other's  heart  was  tike  a  heart  of  stone. 
*A  sum  of  ;^3ooo  was  required,   which    Shelley  found 

it  very  ditiicult  to  raise. 


C04     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

nnd  clothes.  He  caught  up  a  bottle  of  laudanum,  and  said  : 
'\  never  part  from  this;'  then  he  added:  'I  am  always 
repeating  to  myself  your  lines  from  Sophocles  : 

Man's  happiest  lot  is  not  to  be,  etc.,  etc.'" 

Hogg  knew  nothing  of  this  until  June  8th. 

"  We  were  walking  through  Newgate  Street,"  he  say;  ; 
■"when  we  reached  Skinner  Street,  Shelley  said  :  'I  must 
speak  with  Godwin  ;  come  in,  I  will  not  detain  you  long.' 
I  followed  him  through  the  shop,  which  was  the  only 
entrance,  and  upstairs.  We  entered  a  room  on  the  first 
floor.  .  .  .  Godwin  was  not  there.  Shelley  appeared  to  be 
displeased  at  not  finding  the  fountain  of  '  Political  Justice.' 

'"Where  is  Godwin  ?'  he  asked  me  several  times,  as  if  I 
knew.  .  .  .  He  continued  his  uneasy  pcomenade  ;  and  I 
stood  reading  the  names  of  old  English  authors  on  the 
backs  of  venerable  volumes,  when  the  door  was  softly  and 
partially  opened,  a  thrilling  voice  called,  'Shelley!'  A 
thrilling  voice  answered,  '  Mary  !  '  and  he  darted  out  of  the 
room,  like  an  arrow  from  the  bow  of  the  far-shooting  king. 
A  very  young  female,  fair,  and  fair-haired,  pale  indeed,  and 
wàth  a  piercing  look,  wearing  a  frock  of  tartan,  an  unusual 
dress  in  London  at  that  time,  had  called  him  out  of  the  room. 
He  was  absent  a  very  short  time — a  minute  or  two,  and 
then  returned.  '  Godwin  is  out,  there  is  no  use  in  waiting.' 
So  we  continued  our  walk  along  Holborn.  '  Who  was  that, 
pray?'  I  asked;  'a  daughter!'  'Yes.'  'A  daughter  of 
William  Godwin.'"  'The  daughter  of  Godwin,  and  Mary.' 
This  was  the  first  time  that  I  beheld  a  very  distinguished 
lady,  of  whom  I  have  much  to  say  hereafter.  .  .  .  Hei 
quietness  struck  me,  and  also  her  paleness  and  piercing 
look." 

The  impression  produced  on  Pvlary  by  Shelley 
ivas  not  less  profound.  His  reverence  and  filial 
devotion  for  Godwin,  the  enthusiastic  admiration 
he  expressed  for  her  mother,  and  more  than  all. 
perhaps,  his  deep  sadness  revealing  some  profound 
sorrow  of  heart,  touched  her  tender  and  generous 
soul  ;  unasked  she  gave  him  that  pity,  so  near 
akin  to  love,  that  had  been  refused  himi  by 
Harriet,  and  on  one  occasion  her  emotion  over- 
came her  as  she  gazed  on  him,  and  tears  rose  to 
her  eyes.     Shelley  laid  aside  the  constraint  he  had 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLIX.  205 

put  upon  himself,  and  responded  by  a  little  poem 
■which  throws  more  light  on  the  dawn  of  their 
affection,  and  on  their  delicate  and  difficult  posi- 
tion, than  all  the  narratives  of  their  biographers. 

Meanwhile  Shelley  still  corresponded  with 
Harriet,  who  had  removed  to  Bath.  Some  few 
days  had  elapsed  at  the  beginning  of  July,  and 
no  letter  reaching  her  from  Shelley,  she  wrote 
in  painful  anxiety  to  the  bookseller  Hookham, 
entreating  for  news  of  her  absent  husband,  failing 
which,  she  would  herself  come  to  London. 
Shelley  replied  to  this  that  he  expected  her,  and 
she  arrived  in  town  on  July  14th. 

In  the  interim,  a  terrible  revelation  had  dealt 
a  final  blow  to  Shelley's  sorely  stricken  heart; 
he  had  convinced  himself  not  only  that  Harriet 
had  ceased  to  love  him,  but  that  she  had  given  her 
heart  and  herself  to  another.*  Holding  this  con- 
viction, no  further  hesitation  was  possible;  Harriet 
might  no  longer  be  his  wife. 

On  her  arrival  in  London,  Harriet  found 
Shelley  fully  resolved  upon  an  irrevocable 
separation. 

She  felt  that  resistance  would  be  unavailing, 
and  acquiesced  in  the  proposed  arrangements, 
returning  with  her  child  to  her  father's  house,, 
and  perhaps  hoping  that  time  would  restore  to 
her  him  whom  she  had  not  retained  on  the  day 
when  he  had  pathetically  entreated  her  to  recipro- 
cate his  love. 

As  there  was  in  Shelley's  heart  neither  anger, 
nor  animosity,  nor  desire  of  revenge,  he  continued 
to  correspond  with  Harriet,  to  provide  for  her 
wants,  and  to  occupy  himself  about  her  with 
friendly  solicitude,  until  a  time  came  when  she 
was  altogether  undeserving  of  his  care.  He  had 
done  his   duty,   according    to   his   conscience   and 

*  An  Irish  gontlemen,  named  Ryan,  who  in  1813  had 
been  intimate  with  Shelley  and  Harriet. 


2o^j  SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

his  creed,  and  at  a  subsequent  period  could  write 
to  Southey,  who  had  entreated  him  to  examine 
his  past  Hfe,  as  follows  : 

I  take  God  to  witness,  if  such  a  being  is  now  regarding 
both  you  and  me,  and  I  pledge  myself  if  we  meet,  as  perhaps 
vou  expect,  before  Him  after  death,  to  repeat  the  same 
in  His  presence,  that  you  accuse  me  wrongfully.  I  am 
innocent  of  ill,  either  done  or  intended. 

The  new  object  of  his  soul's  affection,  the 
ideal  incarnation  of  Godwin's  genius  and  Mary 
Wollstonecraft's  noble  heart,  was  clothed  in 
Shelley's  eyes  with  every  quality  and  every 
perfection  of  the  valiant  and  ideal  woman  that 
Harriet  had  lacked. 

Mr.  Jeaffreson  exhausts  his  ingenuity  in  trying 
to  prove  that  Mary  Godwin  was  a  kind  of 
ingénue,  who  had  been  brought  up  in  the  usual 
wholesome  beliefs  concerning  marriage  and  love, 
and  that  Shelley  was  the  first  to  open  her  eyes 
and  initiate  her  into  her  mother's  doctrines. 
This  is  wilfully  to  misread  Mary's  character  and 
disposition.  "She  is  singularly  bold,  somewhat 
imperious,  and  active  in  mind/'  so  Godwin  wrote 
of  Mary  at  the  age  of  fifteen  ;  "  her  desire  of 
knowledge  is  great,  and  her  perseverance  in 
everything  she  undertakes  almost  invincible." 

With  such  a  temperament  as  this,  and  living 
as  she  did  in  an  atmosphere  of  free-thought, 
Mary  had  not  needed  lessons  from  Shelley  to 
initiate  her  into  the  religion  of  reason  ;  she  had 
amply  profited  by  the  teachings  of  Mr.  Baxter,* 
with  whom  she  had  passed  much  of  her  girlhood. 
Shelley  was  surprised  to  meet  with  such  elevation 
of  thought,  and  such  high  philosophy,  united  with 
such  extreme  youth,  and  became  her  disciple. 
"I  believe/'  he  wrote  to  her   in    October,   1814, 

*  "  Mr.  Baxter,"  says  Dowden,  "  had  fed  upon  Godwin's 
doctrines,  and  on  the  appearance  of  '  Queen  Mab'  expressed 
his  hisrhest  admiration  for  that  work." 


SHELLEY  IN  DUBLLX.  207 

'^  I  must  become  in  IMary's  hands  what  Harriet 
was  in  mine.  Yet  how  differently  disposed,  how 
devoted  and  affectionate,  how  beyond  measure 
reverencing  and  adoring  the  inteUigence  that 
governs  me  !  "  It  was  on  terms  of  equality  that 
Mary,  as  she  herself  said  at  a  later  period,  placed 
her  hand  in  his  hand,  and  linked  her  fate  with  his. 

In  "  Laon  and  Cythna,^'  Laon  bows  before 
the  genius  of  Cythna,  and  on  Cythna  the  poet 
confers  the  part  of  teacher,  of  seer,  and  of  prophet. 

The  tender  remembrance  of  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft  hovered  over  the  delicious  idyll  of  these 
sister-souls,  who  joined  their  ardent  ideal  aspira- 
tions in  platonic  affection,  until  their  lives  might 
be  united  in  love.  Their  usual  meeting-place 
was  the  old  churchyard  of  St.  Paneras,  where 
was  the  grave  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft.  To  the 
shade  of  its  overhanging  willow  Mary  would 
escape  with  her  books  from  the  troubles  of 
home  and  the  ill-temper  of  her  stepmother.  It 
was  there,  probably,  that  she  read  "  Queen 
Mab"  in  the  copy  given  her  by  Shelley,  in 
which  he  had  written  ''  Mary  Wollstonecraft 
Godwin,  P.B.S.  You  see,  Mary,  I  have  not 
forgotten  you."  At  the  end  of  the  volume  Mary 
had  written  in  July,  1814: 

This  book  is  sacred  to  me,  and  as  no  other  creature 
shall  ever  look  into  it,  I  may  write  in  it  what  I  please. 
Yet  what  shall  I  write— that  I  love  the  author  beyond 
all  powers  of  expression  and  that  I  am  parted  from  him, 
dearest  and  only  love  ?  By  that  love  we  have  promised 
to  each  other,  although  I  may  not  be  yours  I  can  never 
be  another's.     But  I  am  thine,  exclusively  thine. 

Then  followed  these  verses  : 

By  the  kiss  of  love,  the  glance  none  saw  beside 
The  smile  none  else  might  understand, 

The  whispered  thought  of  hearts  allied. 
The  pressure  of  thy  thrilling  hand.* 


*  From  Byron's  "  To  Thyrza,"'  the  first  line  being  altered. 


2oS    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

I  have  pledged  mj-self  to  thee,  and  sacred  is  the  gift.  I 
remember  your  words  :  "  You  are  row,  Mary,  going  to  mix 
with  many,  and  for  a  moment  I  shall  depart,  but  in  the  soli- 
tude of  your  chamber  I  shall  be  with  you."  Yes,  you  are  ever 
with  me,  sacred  vision — 

But  ah  !  I  feel  in  this  was  given 

A  blessing  never  meant  for  me  ; 
Thou  art  too  like  a  dream  from  heaven 

For  earthly  love  to  merit  thee.* 

A  short  separation  had  been  imposed  on 
Shelley  by  Godwin.  The  latter  was  certainly 
no  very  austere  Geronte  ;  but  he  had  been 
informed  of  the  secret  meetings  of  the  young 
people,  with  whom  he  had  seriously  remonstrated. 
In  order  to  lull  the  watchfulness  of  the 
philosopher,  Shelley  for  a  while  ceased  to  see 
Mary.  But  the  vows  they  had  interchanged, 
and  the  ardour  of  their  love,  could  endure  no 
long  separation  ;  they  loved  each  other,  and 
who  should  prevent  the  union  of  their  lives? 
Without  the  knowledge  of  Godwin  and  his  wife, 
the  lovers  made  their  secret  arrangements,  and 
the  astonishment  of  the  author  of  "  Political 
Justice  "  was  great  when  on  the  morning  of 
June  28th,  he  was  informed  that  Mary's  and 
Jane  Clairmont's  rooms  were  empty.  The  lovers 
were  flying  to  the  Continent. 

*  From  Byron's  lines  beginning,  "  If  sometimes  in  the 
haunts  of  men." 


CHAPTER   XI.- 

"'lilSTORY    OF   A   SIX   WEEKS'     TOUR" — JOURNAL 
OF    SHELLEY  AND   MARY — 1814. 

At  four  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  July  28th, 
the  fugitives,  accompanied  by  Jane  Clairmont, 
who  was  to  act  as  interpreter,  left  vSkinner 
Street  for  Dover,  But  Shelley  shall  tell  the 
story  himself:  * 

[July  28. — The  night  preceding  this  morning,  all  being 
decided,  I  ordered  a  chaise  to  be  ready  by  four  o'clock.  I 
watched  until  the  lightning  and  the  stars  became  pale.  At 
length  it  was  four.  I  believed  it  not  possible  that  we  should 
succeed  ;  still  there  appeared  to  lurk  some  danger  even  in 
certainty.  I  went  ;  1  saw  her  ;  she  came  to  mc.  Yet  one 
quarter  of  an  hour  remained.  Still  some  arrangement  must 
be  made  ;  and  she  left  me  for  a  short  time.  How  dreadful 
did  this  time  appear  !     It  seemed  that  we  trifled  with  life 

and  hope.    A  few  minutes  passed.    She  was  in  my  arms 

we  were  safe.     We  were  on  our  road  to  Dover. 


*  "We  owe  to  Mr.  Dowden  the  very  interesting  extracts 
from  Shelley's  Journal,  from  which  the  account  published  by 
Mary  in  1817  was  compiled,  under  the  following  title  : 
"  History  of  a  Six  Weeks'  Tour  through  a  part  of  France, 
Switzerland,  Germany,  and  Holland  ;  with  Letters  descriptive 
of  a  Sail  round  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  and  of  the  Gl  iciers  of 
Chamouni."  We  have  completed  Shelley's  Journal  by  the 
printed  narrative,  all  passages  from  the  former  being 
enclosed  in  brackets  [    ],  thus. 

P 


2IO    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Mary  was  ill  as  we  travelled  ;  yet  in  that  illness  what 
pleasure  and  security  did  we  not  share  !  The  heat  made  her 
faint  ;  it  was  necessary  at  every  sta^^e  that  we  should  repose. 
I  was  divided  between  anxiety  for  her  health  and  terror  lest 
our  pursuers  should  arrive.  I  reproached  myself  with  not 
allowing  her  sufficient  time  to  rest,  with  conceiving  any  evil 
so  great  that  the  slightest  portion  of  her  comfort  might  be 
sacrificed  to  avoid  it. 

At  Dart  ford  we  took  four  horses,  that  we  might  outstrip 
pursuit.  We  arrived  at  Dover  before  four  o'clock  (where 
Mary  was  refreshed  by  a  sea-bath).  Some  time  was 
necessarily  expended  in  consideration,  in  dinner,  in  bar- 
gaining with  sailors  and  Custom-house  officers.  At  length 
we  engaged  a  small  boat  to  convey  us  to  Calais  ;  it  was 
ready  by  six  o'clock.  The  evening  was  most  beautiful  ;  the 
sands  slowly  receded  ;  we  felt  sale.  There  was  little  wind, 
the  sails  flapped  in  the  flagging  breeze. 

The  moon  rose,  the  night  came  on,  and  with  the  night  a 
slow  heavy  swell,  and  a  fresher  breeze  which  soon  became 
so  violent  as  to  toss  the  boat  very  much.  Mary  was  much 
affected  by  the  sea  ;  she  could  scarcely  move.  She  lay  in 
my  arms  through  the  night  ;  the  little  strength  which  re- 
mained in  my  own  exhausted  frame  was  all  expended  in 
keeping  her  head  at  rest  on  my  bosom.  The  wind  was 
violent  and  contrary.  If  we  could  not  reach  Calais,  the 
sailors  proposed  making  for  Boulogne.  They  promised  only 
two  hours'  sail  from  the  shore  ;  yet  hour  after  hour  passed, 
and  we  were  still  far  distant,  when  the  moon  sank  in  the  red 
and  stormy  horizon,  and  the  fast-flashing  lightning  became 
pale  in  the  breaking  day.  We  were  proceeding  slowly 
against  the  wind,  when  suddenly  a  thunder-squall  struck  the 
sail,  and  the  waves  rushed  into  the  boat.  Even  the  sailors 
believed  that  our  situation  was  perilous.  The  wind  had  now 
changed,  and  we  drove  before  a  wind  that  came  in  violent 
gusts,  directly  to  Calais. 

Mary  did  not  know  our  danger  ;  she  was  resting  between 
my  knees,  that  were  unable  to  support  her.  She  did  not 
speak  or  look,  but  I  felt  that  she  was  there.  I  had  time  in 
that  moment  to  reflect  and  even  to  reason  upon  death  ;  it 
was  rather  a  thing  of  discomfort  and  of  disappointment  than 
horror  to  me.  We  should  never  be  separated,  but  in  death 
we  might  not  know  and  feel  our  union  as  now.  I  hope,  but 
my  hopes  are  not  unmixed  with  fear  for  what  will  befall 
this  inestimable  spirit  when  we  appear  to  die. 

The  morning  broke,  the  lightning  died  away,  the  violence 
of  the  wind  abated.  We  arrived  at  Calais  whilst  Mary  still 
slept  ;  we  drove  upon  the  sands.  Suddenly  the  broad  sun 
rose  over  France. 


''HISTORY  OF  A   SIX   WEEKS'    TOURP     211 

Friday,  July  29. — I  said  :  "  Mary,  look  ;  the  sun  rises 
over  France."  We  walked  over  the  sands  to  the  inn  ;  we 
were  shown  into  an  apartment  that  answered  the  purpose 
both  of  a  sitting  and  sleeping-room.] 

I  heard  for  the  first  time  the  confused  buzz  of  voices 
speaking  a  different  language  from  that  to  which  I  had  been 
accustomed,  and  saw  a  costume  very  unlike  that  worn  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  Channel  ;  the  women  with  high  caps  and 
short  jackets  ;  the  men  with  ear-rings  ;  ladies  walking  about 
with  high  bonnets  or  coiffures  lodged  on  the  top  of  the  head, 
the  hair  dragged  up  underneath,  without  any  stray  curls 
to  decorate  the  temples  or  cheeks.  There  is,  however, 
something  very  pleasing  in  the  manners  and  appearance  of 
the  people  of  Calais  that  prepossesses  you  in  their  favour.  A 
national  reflection  might  occur  that  when  Edward  III.  took 
Calais,  he  turned  out  the  old  inhabitants,  and  peopled  it 
almost  entirely  with  our  own  countrymen  ;  but  unfortunately 
the  manners  are  not  English. 

We  remained  that  day  and  the  greater  part  of  the  next 
at  Calais  ;  we  had  been  obliged  to  leave  our  boxes  the  night 
before  at  the  English  Custom-house,*  and  it  was  arranged 
that  they  should  go  by  the  packet  of  the  following  day, 
which,  detained  by  the  contrary  wind,  did  not  arrive  until 
night. 

[In  the  evening  Captain  Davison  came  and  told  us  that  a 
fat  lady  had  arrived,  who  had  said  that  I  had  run  away  with 
her  daughter  ;  it  was  Mrs.  Godwin.  Jane  spent  the  night 
with  her  mother. 

Snturday,  July  30. — Jane  informs  us  that  she  is  unable 
to  withstand  the  pathos  of  Mrs.  Godwin's  appeal.  She 
appealed  to  the  municipality  of  Paris — 15  past  slavery  and 
to  future  freedom.  I  counselled  her  to  take  at  least  an  hour 
for  consideration.  She  returned  to  Mrs.  Godwin  and  informed 
her  that  she  resolved  to  continue  with  us. 

I  met  Mrs.  Godwin  in  the  street  apparently  proceeding 
to  embark  for  Dover.  I  walked  alone  with  Maiy  to  the 
field  beyond  the  gate  (a  field  among  the  fortifications — hay- 
makers at  work  in  it).  At  six  in  the  evening  we  left  Calais 
and  arrived  at  Boulogne  at  ten.] 

We  left  Calais  in  a  cabriolet  drawn  by  three  horses.  To 
persons  who  had  never  before  seen  anything  but  a  spruce 
English  chaise  and  post-boy,  there  was  sometliing  irresistibly 
ludicrous  in  our  equipage.  Our  cabriolet  was  shaped  some- 
thing like  a  post-chaise,  except  that  it  had  only  two  wheels, 
and  consequently  there  were  no  doors  at  the  sides  ;  the  front 
was  let  down  to  admit  pasfe:igers.  The  horses  were  there 
placed  abreast,  the  tallest  in  the  middle,  who  was  rendered 
more  formidable  by  the  addition  of  an  unintelligible  article 

P  2 


212     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

of  harness,  resembling  a  pair  of  wooden  wings  fastened  to  his 
shoulders  ;  the  harness  was  of  rope  ;  and  the  postillion,  a 
queer,  upright  little  fellow,  with  a  long  pigtail,  craqiiéed  his 
whip,  and  clattered  on  ;  while  an  old  forlorn  shepherd  with  a 
cocked  hat  gazed  on  us  as  we  passed. 

The  roads  are  excellent,  but  the  heat  was  intense,  and 
Mary  suffered  greatly  from  it.  We  slept  at  Boulogne  the 
first  night,  where  there  was  an  ugly,  but  remarkably  good- 
tempered  femme  de  chambre..  This  made  us  for  the  first 
time  remark  the  difference  which  exists  between  this  class  of 
persons  in  France  and  in  England.  In  the  latter  country 
they  are  prudish,  and  if  they  become  in  the  least  degree 
familiar  they  are  impudent.  The  lower  orders  in  France 
have  the  easiness  and  politeness  of  the  most  well-bred 
English  ;  they  treat  you  unaffectedly  as  their  equal,  and 
consequently  there  is  no  scope  for  insolence. 

We  had  ordered  horses  to  be  ready  during  the  night, 
but  were  too  fatigued  to  make  use  of  them.  The  man  insisted 
on  being  paid  for  the  whole  post.  "Ah,  madame,"  said  the 
femme  de  chambre,  "  pensez-y  ;  c'est  pour  dédommager  les 
pauvres  chevaux  d'avoir  perdu  leur  doux  sommeil."  A 
joke  from  an  English  chambermaid  would  have  been  quite 
another  thing. 

In  order  to  hasten  the  journey  as  much  as  possible,  on 
.account  of  Mary's  health,  we  did  not  rest  the  following  night, 
and  the  next  day  about  two,  arrived  in  Paris. 

{Tuesday,  Aj/gust  2. —  We  engaged  lodgings  at  the 
Hôtel  de  Vienne.'  Mary  looked  over,  with  me,  the  papers 
contained  in  her  box.  They  consisted  of  her  own  writings, 
letters  from  her  father  and  her  friends,  and  my  letters.  She 
promised  me  that  I  should  be  permitted  to  read  and  study 
these  productions  of  her  mind  that  preceded  our  intercourse. 
I  shall  claim  this  promise  at  Uri.  In  the  evening  we  walked 
to  the  gardens  of  the  Tuilleries  ;  they  are  very  formal  and 
.uninteresting,  without  any  grass.  Mary  was  not  well  ;  we 
returned,  and  were  too  happy  to  sleep.* 


*  The  "History of  a  Six  Weeks'  Tour  "  adds  the  following 
details  about  Paris  :  "  In  (his  city  there  are  no  hotels  where 
you  can  reside  as  long  or  as  short  a  time  as  you  please,  and 
we  were  obliged  to  engage  apartments  at  an  hotel  for  a 
week.  They  were  dear  and  not  very  pleasant.  As  usual  in 
France,  the  principal  apartment  was  a  bedchamber  ;  there 
was  another  closet  with  a  bed,  and  an  ante-chamber  which 
we  used  as  a  sitting-room.  ...  I  think  the  Boulevards 
infinitely  pleasanter  than  the  Tuilleries.  This  street  nearly 
surrounds  Paris,  and  is  eight  miles  in  extent  ;  it  is  very  wide. 


''HISTORY  OF  A   SIX    IVEEKS'    TOUR."     213 

Wedjiesdny,  Aitgitst  3. —  Received  a  cold  and  stupid 
letter  from  Hookham.  He  said  that  Mrs.  Boinville's  family 
were  reduced  to  the  utmost  misery  by  the  distant  chance  of 
their  being  called  upon  in  the  course  of  a  year  to  pay  forty 
pounds  for  me.  He  did  not  send  the  money.  Wrote  to 
Tavernier.  Mary  read  to  me  some  passages  from  Lord 
Byron's  poems.  I  was  not  before  so  clearly  aware  how 
much  colouring  our  own  feelings  throw  upon  the  liveliest 
delineations  of  other  minds.  Our  own  perceptions  are  the 
world  to  us. 

lluirsday,  August  4. — Mary  told  me  that  this  was  my 
birthday;  1  thought  it  had  been  the  27th  June.  Tavernier 
breakfasted  ;  he  is  an  idiot.  I  sold  my  watch,  chain,  etc., 
which  brought  eight  napoleons  five  francs.*  Tavernier 
dined  ;  the  fool  infinitely  more  insupportable.  He  walked 
with  us  in  the  evening  to  the  Boulevard  ;  he  walked  with 
Jane. 

Friday.,  August  5. — Breakfasted  with  some  friends  of 
Tavernier.  I  committed  the  mistake  of  imagining  a  married 
woman  to  be  a  little  baby  of  nine  years  old,  and  if  her 
child  (whom  I  imagined  to  be  her  slater)  had  not  possessed 
a  more  prepossessing  countenance,  I  should  have  taken  her 
in  my  lap  and  offered  her  a  lump  of  sugar.  The  ladies  talked 
of  dress  and  eating.  We  went  with  Tavernier  to  the  police 
and  the  church  of  Notre  Dame,  the  interior  of  which  much 
disappointed  our  expectations.  At  the  Louvre  we  saw  one 
picture  apparently  of  the  Deluge,  which  was  terribly  im- 
pressive. It  was  the  only  remarkable  picture  which  we  had 
time  to  observe.  There  was  Heaven  and  Hell  also  ;  the 
Blessed  looked  too  stupid.  In  the  evening  we  sallied  forth 
in  search  of  H.  M.  (Helen  Marie)  Williams.  After  numerous 
unavailing  inquiries,  we  met  at  the  Place  Vendôme  a  French- 
man who  could  speak  English.  He  offered  us  his  services 
in   the  necessary   inquiries.     He  took   us    out   of  our   way 

and  planted  on  either  side  with  trees.  At  one  end  is  a 
superb  cascade  which  refreshes  the  senses  by  its  continual 
spkishing  ;  near  this  stands  the  gate  of  St.  Denis,  a  beautiful 
piece  of  sculpture.  I  do  not  know  how  it  may  at  present 
be  disfigured  by  the  Gothic  barbarism  of  the  conquerors  of 
France,  who  were  not  contented  with  retaking  the  spoils  of 
Napoleon,  but  with  impotent  malice  destroyed  the  monu- 
ments of  their  own  defeat.  When  I  saw  this  gate  it  was  in 
its  splendour,  and  made  you  imagine  that  the  days  of  Roman 
greatness  were  transported  to  Paris." 

*  It  has  been  stated  that  Shelley  sent  this  money  to 
Harriet. 


214    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

for  the  pleasure  of  hearing  himself  talk  ;  he  told  us  that  he 
had  assisted  in  bribing  the  mob  to  overthrow  the  statue  of 
Napoleon  ;  that  he  was  a  Royalist,  and  had  been  in  the 
English  army  during  the  reign  of  Bonaparte  ;  he  was  the 
first  Royalist  who  had  entered  Paris.  He  made  us  sit  down 
in  the  garden  of  the  Tailleries,  and  there  with  a  smile 
of  abundant  and  overflowing  vanity,  confessed  that  he  was 
an  author  and  a  poet.  We  invited  him  to  breakfast,  hoping 
to  derive  from  his  ofificiousness  a  relief  from  our  embarrass- 
ments. 

Saturday,  Atigiist  6. — M.  R.  de  Savi  (the  "author  and 
poet")  breakfasted  with  us  ;  we  go  with  him  to  M.  Peregaux 
the  banker,  who  refuses  to  advance  money.  I  learn  from 
Tavernier  the  direction  of  H.  M.  Williams.  Secure  that  my 
statement  of  our  history  and  situation  cannot  fail  to  interest, 
I  hasten  hither.  She  is  absent  in  the  country  ;  the  time  of 
her  return  is  uncertain.  On  my  return  to  the  hotel  we  go  to 
Tavernier's  office  to  seek  for  letters  ;  we  hear  that  Tavernier 
has  letters  for  us,  and  is  gone  to  our  hotel.  We  return.  We 
had  appointed  to  dine  with  M.  R.  de  Savi  at  six  ;  we  keep 
the  appointment  at  eight,  leaving  Jane  to  wait  for  Tavernier. 
M.  R.  de  Savi  had  relinquished  all  hope.  We  return. 
Tavernier  brings  a  dull  and  insolent  letter  from  Hookham. 

Sunday,  Au^usi  7. — Tavernier  breakfasts.  Promises 
money.  The  morning  passes  in  delightful  converse.  We 
almost  forget  that  we  are  prisoners  in  Paris  ;  Mary  especially 
seems  insensible  to  all  future  evil.  She  feels  as  if  our  love 
would  alone  suffice  to  resist  the  invasions  of  calamity.  She 
rested  on  my  bosom  and  seemed  even  indifferent  to  take 
sufficient  food  for  the  sustenance  of  life.  We  went  to 
Tavernier  and  received  a  remittance  of  sixty  pounds.  We 
talk  over  our  plans  and  determine  to  walk  to  Uri.  We 
went  to  sleep  early  on  the  sofa.] 

In  England  we  could  not  have  put  our  plan  in  execution 
without  susiaming  continual  insult  and  impertinence  ;  the 
French  are  far  more  tolerant  of  the  vagaries  of  their  neigh- 
bours. We  resolved  to  walk  through  France,  and  with  this 
design  we  determined  to  purchase  an  ass,  to  carry  our  port- 
manteau and  one  of  us  by  turns. 

Early  therefore  on  Monday,  August  8th,  Shelley  and 
Claire  went  to  the  ass  market  and  purchased  an  ass,  and  the 
rest  of  the  day  until  four  in  the  afternoon,  was  spent  in 
preparations  lor  our  departure  ;  duiing  which,  Madame 
1  hôtesse  paid  us  a  visit,  and  attempted  to  dissuade  us  from 
our  design.  She  represented  to  us  that  a  large  army  had 
been  recently  disbanded,  that  the  soldiers  and  officers 
wandered  idle  about  the  country,  and  that  les  dames  seraient 
ccrtaineinent  enlevées.     But  we  were  proof  against  her  argu- 


"HISTORY  OF  A   SIX   WEEKS''    TOUR:'     215 

inents,  and  packing  up  a  tew  necessaries,  leaving  the  rest  to 
go  by  the  diligence,  we  departed  in  di  fiacre  from  the  door  of 
the  hotel,  our  little  ass  following. 

We  dismissed  the  coach  at  the  barrier.  It  was  dusk,  and 
the  ass  seemed  totally  unable  to  bear  one  of  us,  appearing  to 
sink  under  the  portmanteau,  although  it  was  small  and  light. 
We  were,  however,  merry  enough,  and  thought  the  leagues 
short.     We  arrived  at  Charenton  about  ten. 

Charenton  is  prettily  situated  in  a  valley,  through  which 
the  Seine  flows,  winding  among  banks  variegated  with  trees. 
On  looking  at  this  scene  Claire  exclaimed,  "Oh!  this  is 
beautiful  enough  ;  let  us  live  here."  This  was  her  exclama- 
tion on  every  new  scene,  and  as  each  surpassed  the  one 
before,  she  cried,  "  I  am  glad  we  did  not  stay  at  Charenton, 
but  let  us  live  here." 

Finding  our  ass  useless,  we  sold  it  before  we  proceeded 
on  our  journey,  and  bought  a  mule  for  ten  napoleons.  About 
nine  o'clock  we  departed.  We  were  clad  in  black  silk.  I 
rode  on  the  mule,  which  carried  also  our  portmanteau; 
Shelley  and  Claire  followed,  bringing  a  small  basket  of 
provisions.  About  one  o'clock  we  arrived  at  Gros-Bois, 
where  under  the  shade  of  trees  we  ate  our  bread  and  fruit, 
and  drank  our  wine,  thinking  of  Don  Quixote  and  Sancho. 

This  night  we  slept  at  Guignes,  in  the  same  room  and 
beds  in  which  Napoleon  and  some  of  his  generals  had  rested 
during  the  late  war.  The  little  old  woman  of  the  place  was 
highly  gratified  in  having  this  story  to  tell,  and  spoke  in 
warm  praise  of  the  Empress  Josephine  and  Marie  Louise, 
who  had  at  different  times  passed  on  that  road. 


After  having  admired  the  picturesque  situation 
of  Provins,  which  "formed  a  scene  for  painting," 
our  travellers  reached  that  part  of  the  country 
that  had  been  most  devastated  during  the  war, 
and  where  smoking  ruins  still  marked  the 
passage  of  the  Cossack.  Throughout  their 
journey  from  Nogent  to  Troyes,  there  were 
but  ruined  villages,  houses  burned  down, 
blackened  beams,  broken  walls,  devastated  gar- 
dens, deplorable  ruins,  and  inhabitants  still  more 
wretched  and  deplorable.  They  can  procure  no 
milk,  the  cows  had  been  taken  by  the  Cossacks  ; 
they  think  themselves  fortunate  when  they  find 
shelter   in   a   poor    inn   where    they   are    offered 


2i6    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

rancid  bacon,  sour  bread,  and  impossible  beds. 
At  Echemine  the  inhabitants,  as  if  belonging 
to  another  world,  are  ignorant  that  Napoleon  has 
been  deposed,  and  when  Shelley  asked  why 
they  did  not  rebuild  their  cottages,  replied,  they 
were  afraid  of  the  Cossacks.  On  approaching 
Troyes,  a  little  green  vineyard  seems  to  them 
like  an  oasis  in  the  Libyan  desert. 

On  August  13th  they  reached  that  "dirty 
and  uninviting  town,"  and  there,  owing  to 
Shelley  having  sprained  an  ankle,  and  walking 
being  impossible,  the  mule  was  sold  and  an 
open  carriage  bought  for  five  napoleons;  a 
driver  also  was  engaged,  who  undertook  for  the 
sum  of  eight  napoleons  to  convey  the  travellers 
to  Neufchâtel  in  six  days.  The  simple  vanity 
of  their  muleteer  amused  our  travellers.  He 
pointed  out  a  plain  as  the  scene  of  a  battle 
between  the  Russians  and  the  French — 'Svhere 
the  Russians  gained  the  victory?"  interrupted 
Mary.  "  Oh,  no,  madame,"  he  replied,  "  the 
French  are  never  beaten."  "  But  how  was  it, 
then,  that  the  Russians  entered  Troyes  .?  "  "  Oh, 
after  being  beaten,  they  took  a  circuitous  route, 
and  thus  entered  the  town." 

Shelley  made  use  of  his  short  sojourn  at 
Troyes  to  write  a  long  letter  to  Harriet,  in  which 
he  proposed  she  should  join  their  travelling  party, 
and  requested  her  to  address  her  reply  to  the 
Post  Office,  Neufchâtel.  He  ends  his  description 
of  the  terrible  state  of  France  with  the  following 
singular  remark  :  "...  dreadful  as  these 
calamities  are,  I  can  scarcely  pity  the  inhabitants; 
they  are  the  most  unamiable,  inhospitable,  and 
unaccommodating  of  the  human  race." 

At  Besançon,  their  proximity  to  the  mountains 
delighted  them  ;  but  the  roads  became  difficult, 
and  the  driver  refused  to  proceed.  Thev  ..ere 
obliged   to   pass  the  night   in  the   miserable  inrv 


''HISTORY  OF  A    SIX   WEEKS'    TOUR:'     217 

of  a  miserable  village  called  Mort  ;  after  a 
delightful  evening  spent  in  climbing  rocks,  and 
reading  a  tale  by  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  also 
Shakespeare's  As  Yo7t  Like  It,  they  determined 
on  sleeping  by  the  kitchen  fire,  as  an  alternative 
to  sharing  a  bedroom  with  the  driver  ;  "  Shelley 
much  disturbed  by  the  creaking  door,  the  screams 
of  a  poor  smothered  child,  and  the  girl  who 
washed  the  glasses." 

The  driver,  still  scared  at  the  mountains, 
halted  at  the  little  village  of  Noé.  Our  travellers 
took  advantage  of  the  delay  to  wander  in  a 
wood,  where  they  entered  into  serious  converse  on 
the  perfectibility  and  future  destiny  of  the  world.* 


*  Claire  records  this  conversation  in  her  journal  :  "  Shelley 
said  there  would  come  a  time  when  nowhere  on  the  earth 
would  there  be  a  dirty  cottage  to  be  found.  Mary  asked 
what  time  would  elapse  before  that  time  would  come  ;  he 
said,  'Perhaps  a  thousand  years.'  We  said,  'Perhaps  it 
would  never  come,  as  it  was  so  difficult  to  persuade  the 
poor  to  be  clean.'  But  he  said  it  must  infallibly  arrive, 
for  Society  was  progressive,  and  was  evidently  moving  for- 
wards towards  perfectibility  ;  and  then  he  described  the 
career  made  by  man.  I  wish  I  could  remember  the  whole, 
but  half  has  slipped  out  of  my  memory— only  I  recollect 
that  men  were  first  savages  ;  then  nomadic  tribes  wandering 
from  place  to  place  with  their  flocks  ;  then  they  formed  into 
villages;  then  into  towns  ;  and  then  improvement  in  mind, 
morals,  comfort,  etc.,  set  in  ;  and  then  next  came  the  Arts, 
and  then  the  Sciences  ;  and  from  this  point  Society 
would  go  on  step  by  step  to  almost  perfection.  In  the 
meanwhile  the  voiiurier,  grown  tired  ot  waiting,  had  gone 
on  alone.  We  found  him  again  at  Pontarlier.  fie  was 
very  impertinent  ;  asked  why  we  had  stayed  so  long- 
in  the  woods,  there  was  nothing  to  see  in  the  woods  ; 
said  he  had  waited  two  hours  at  Noé  expecting  us  to 
return,  and  then  had  driven  on  ;  it  was  all  our  faults, 
he  said  ;  and  after  thinking  awhile,  Shelley  remarked  that 
the  driver  was  right,  and  it  was  his  dissertation  upon  the 
perfectibility  of  Man  that  had  put  us  into  such  difiicultics. 
Mary  laughed  and  said  :  '  Men  always  were  the  source  of 
a  thousand  difficulties.'  Then  Shelley  asked  her  why  she 
of  a  sudden  looked  so  sad,  and  she  answered  :     '  1  was 


2i8    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AXD    THE  PO:.T. 

This  was  their  farewell  to  France.  As  they 
approached  Switzerland,  after  leaving  Saint 
Sulpice,  the  picturesque  beauties  of  the  Alpine 
scenery  made  them  forget  all  their  previous 
misadventures.  On  the  19th  August,  when  two 
leagues  from  Neufchâtel,  they  had  their  first  view 
of  the  Alps.  "  How  great  is  my  rapture  !  "  cried 
Shelley.  ""la  fiery  man,  with  my  heart  full  of 
youth,  and  with  my  beloved  by  my  side,  I  behold 
those  lordly,  immeasurable  Alps.  They  look 
like  a  second  world  gleaming  on  one;  they  look 
like  dreams  more  than  realities^  they  are  so 
heavenly  pure  and  white.'' 

The  sum  of  sixty  pounds  they  had  brought 
from  Paris  was  expended.  No  letters  for  them  at 
Neufchâtel.  Fortunately,  a  banker  is  found  who 
consents  to  advance  Shelley  the  sum  of  thirty- 
eight  pounds,  sufficient  to  take  them  to  Uri, 
the  intended  close  of  their  journey,  and  to 
establish  them  quietly  in  some  lonely  cottage. 
Two  days'  driving  brought  them  to  Lucerne,  and 
its  long  imagined  delights.  Briinnen,  with  the 
sight  of  William  Tells  Chapel,  fascinated  them  ; 
"this  lovely  lake,  these  sublime  mountains  and 
wild  forests  seemed  a  fit  cradle  for  a  mind  aspiring 
to  high  adventure  and  heroic  deeds."  They  could 
not  weary  of  contemplating  "  the  divine  objects 
that  surrounded"  them. 

The  romance-writer  and  poetj  full  of  dreams 
of  a  golden  age  and  terrestrial  paradise,  was 
then  meditating  his  romance  of  "  The  Assassins,"  * 

thinking  of  my  father,  and  wondering  what  he  was  now 
feeling.'  He  then  said  :  '  Do  you  mean  that  as  a  reproach 
to  me?'  and  she  answered:  'Oh,  no  !  don't  let  us  think 
more  about  it.'" 

*  This  was  a  Christian  tribe,  who  at  the  very  beginning 
of  Christianity  had  withdrawn  into  the  valleys  of  the 
Lebanon,  and  became  the  origin  of  the  famous  Assassins, 
who  fought  against  the  Crusaders  under  the  Old  Man  of 
the  Mountain. 


''HISTORY  OF  A   SIX   WEEKS'    TOURP    219 

■of  which,  unfortunately,  only  a  short  fragment 
remains.  The  story  opens  with  the  siege  of 
Jerusalem.  He  purposed  that  Uri  should  be  for 
him  the  solitary  vale  of  Bethzatanai,  where  those 
other  exiles  from  the  holy  city  had  sought  peace, 
love,  and  God,  far  from  the  civilised  world, 
*'  learning  to  identify  this  mysterious  friend  and 
benefactor  with  the  delight  that  is  bred  among 
the  solitary  rocks,  and  has  its  dwelling  alike  in 
the  changing  colours  of  the  clouds,  and  the  inmost 
recesses  of  the  caverns.^^ 

But,  in  the  season  of  its  utmost  prosperity  and  magnifi- 
cence, Art  might  not  aspire  to  vie  with  Nature  in  the  valley 
of  Bethzatanai.  All  that  was  wonderful  and  lovely  was  col- 
lected in  this  deep  seclusion.  The  fluctuating  elements 
seemed  to  have  been  rendered  everlastingly  permanent  in 
forms  of  wonder  and  delight.  The  mountains  of  Lebanon 
had  been  divided  to  their  base  to  form  this  happy  valley  ;  on 
every  side  their  icy  summits  darted  their  white  pinnacles  into 
the  clear  blue  sky,  imaging,  in  their  grotesque  outline, 
minarets,  and  ruined  domes,  and  columns  worn  with  time. 
Far  below,  the  silver  clouds  rolled  their  bright  volumes  in 
many  beautiful  shapes,  and  fed  the  eternal  springs  that, 
quitting  the  dark  chasms  like  a  thousand  radiant  rainbows, 
leaped  into  the  quiet  vale  then,  lingering  in  many  a  dark 
glade  among  the  groves  of  cypress  and  of  palm,  lost  them- 
selves in  the  lake.  The  immensity  of  these  precipitous  moun- 
tains, with  their  starry  pyramids  of  snow,  excluded  the  sun, 
which  overtopped  not,  even  in  its  meridian,  their  overhang- 
ing rocks.  But  a  more  heavenly  and  serener  light  was 
reflected  from  their  icy  mirrors,  which,  piercing  through  the 
many-tinted  clouds,  produced  lights  and  colours  of  inex- 
haustible variety.  The  herbage  was  perpetually  verdant,  and 
clothed  the  darkest  recesses  of  the  caverns  and  the  woods. 
Nature,  undisturbed,  had  become  an  enchantress  in  these 
solitudes  ;  she  had  collected  here  all  that  was  wonderful  and 
divine  from  the  armoury  of  her  omnipotence.  The  very 
winds  breathed  health  and  renovation,  and  the  joyousness  of 
youthful  courage.  Fountains  of  crystalline  water  played  per- 
petually among  the  aromatic  flowers,  and  mingled  a  freshness 
with  their  odour.  The  pine-boughs  became  instruments  of 
exquisite  contrivance,  among  which  every  varying  breeze 
waked  music  of  new  and  more  delightful  melody.  .Meteoric 
shapes,  more  eftulgent   than   the   moonlight,   hung  on   the 


220    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

wandering  clouds,  and  mixed  in  discordant  dance  around 
the  spiral  fountains.  Blue  vapours  assumed  strange  linea- 
ments under  the  rocks  and  among  the  ruins,  lingering  like 
ghosts  with  slow  and  solemn  step.  Through  a  dark  chasm 
to  the  east,  in  the  long  perspective  of  a  portal  glittering  with 
the  unnumbered  riches  of  a  sui:terranean  world,  shone  the 
broad  moon,  pouring,  in  one  yellow  and  unbroken  stream, 
her  horizontal  beams.  Nearer  the  icy  region,  autumn  and 
spring  held  an  alternate  reign.  The  sere  leaves  fell  and 
choked  the  sluggish  brooks,  the  chilling  fogs  hung  diamonds 
on  every  spray,  and  in  the  dark,  cold  evening  the  howling 
winds  made  melancholy  music  in  the  trees.  Far  above  shone 
the  bright  throne  of  winter,  clear,  cold,  and  dazzling.  Some- 
times there  were  seen  the  snowflakes  to  fall  before  the  sinking 
orb  of  the  beamless  sun,  like  a  shower  of  fiery  sulphur.  The 
cataracts,  arrested  in  their  course,  seemed,  with  their  trans- 
parent columns,  to  support  the  dark-browed  rocks.  Some 
times  the  icy  whirlwind  scooped  the  powdery  snow  aloft,  to 
mingle  with  the  hissing  meteors,  and  scatter  spangles  through 
the  rare  and  rayless  atmosphere.      .  . 

To   the   Arabians,  constant   spectators   of    so 
sublime  a  scene  : 

Thus  securely  excluded  from  an  abhorred  world,  all  thought 
of  its  judgment  was  cancelled  by  the  rapidity  of  their  fervid 
imaginations.  They  ceased  to  acknowledge,  or  deigned  not 
to  advert  to,  the  distinctions  with  which  the  majority  of  base 
and  vulgar  minds  control  the  longings  and  struggles  of  the 
sou!  towards  its  place  of  rest.  A  new  and  sacred  fire  was 
kindled  in  their  hearts  and  sparkled  in  their  eyes.  Every 
gesture,  every  feature,  the  minutest  action,  was  modelled  to 
beneficence  and  beauty,  by  the  holy  inspiration  that  had 
descended  on  their  searching  spirits.  The  epidemic  trans- 
port communicated  itself  through  every  heart,  with  the 
rapidity  of  a  blast  from  heaven.  They  were  already  dis- 
embodied spirits  ;  they  were  already  the  inhabitants  of 
paradise.  To  live,  to  breathe,  to  move,  was  itself  a  sensation 
of  immeasurable  transport.  Every  new  contemplation  of  the 
condition  of  his  nature  brought  to  the  happy  enthusiast  an 
added  measure  of  delight,  and  impelled  to  every  organ  where 
mind  is  united  to  external  things,  a  keener  and  more  exquisite 
perception  of  all  that  they  contain  of  lovely  and  divine.  To 
love,  to  be  beloved,  suddenly  became  an  insatiable  famine  of 
his  nature,  which  the  wide  circle  of  the  universe,  compre- 
hending beings  of  such  inexhaustible  variety  and  stupendous 
magnitude  of  excellence,  appeared  too  narrow  and  confined 
to  satiate. 


''HISTORY  OF  A    SIX   WEEKS'    TOUR."    221 

Alas  that  these  visitings  of  the  spirit  of  life  should 
fluctuate  and  pass  away  !  That  the  moments  when  the 
human  mind  is  commensurate  with  all  that  it  can  conceive 
of  excellent  and  powerful,  should  not  endure  with  its  existence, 
and  survive  its  most  momentous  change  !  But  the  beauty  of 
a  vernal  sunset,  with  its  overhanging  curtains  of  empurpled 
cloud,  is  rapidly  dissolved,  to  return  at  some  unexpected  r 
period,  and  spread  an  alleviating  melancholy  over  the  dark 
vigils  of  despair. 

Uri,  however,  was  the  dream  of  one  day  only. 
The  six  months'  intended  residence  in  the  hideous 
Briinnen  house  called  the  Château,  dwindled  to 
one  of  forty-eight  hours.  Only  twenty-eight 
pounds  remained  in  the  travellers'  purse,  and 
they  must  at  once  return  to  London.  On 
August  28th  they  reached  Lucerne,  where 
Shelley  read  King  Lear  aloud,*  and  worked 
at  his  novel  of  "  The  Assassins."  From  motives 
of  economy,  they  decided  on  travelling  by  water, 
taking  the  diligence  par  can  from  Reuss  to 
Lauffenburg  ;  the  passengers,  "uncleanly,"  dis- 
gusting smokers,  and  altogether  so  uncivil  and 
rude,  that  Shelley  was  obliged  to  strike  one  of 
them. 

The  Reuss  is  exceedingly  rapid,  and  we  descended  several 
falls,  one  of  them  more  than  eight  feet.  .  .  .  There  is  some- 
thing very  delicious  in  the  sensation,  when  at  one  moment 
you  are  at  the  top  of  a  fall  of  water,  and  before  the  second 
has  expired  you  are  at  the  bottom,  still  rushing  on  with  the 
impulse  which  the  descent  has  given. 

We  shall  frequently  meet  with  a  recollection  of 
this  sensation  in  the  recital  of  the  fantastic  voyages 
made  by  the  heroes  of  Shelley's  poems. 

From  Basle  to  Mayence  our  travellers  de- 
scended the  Rhine    on  a  boat  laden  with  goods. 

Tuesday,  August  30. — The  Rhine  is  violently  rapid 
to-day,  and  although  interrupted  by  no  rocks  is  swollen  with 

*  Claire,  who  was  highly  impressionable,  was  struck  with 
so  much  horror  at  King  Lear  that  Shelley  was  obliged  to 
discontinue  reading  it  aloud. 


222    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

hiç^h  waves  ;  it  is  full  of  little  islands,  green  and  beautifuL 
Before  we  arrived  at  Shaufane  the  river  became  suddenly- 
narrow,  and  the  boat  dashed  with  inconceivable  rapidity 
round  the  base  of  a  rocky  hill  covered  with  pines. 

A  ruined  tower,  with  its  desolated  windows,  stood  on  the 
summit  of  another  hill  that  jutted  into  the  river  ;  beyond, 
the  sunset  was  illuminating  the  mountains  and  the  clouds, 
and  casting  the  reflection  of  its  hues  on  the  agitated  river. 
.  .  .  Here  we  had  no  fellow-passengers  to  disturb  our 
tranquilHty  by  their  vulgarity  and  rudeness.  .  .  .  Shellty 
read  aloud  to  us  Mary  Wollstonecraft's  "  Letters  from 
Norway,"  *  and  we  passed  our  time  delightfully. 

The  next  morning-  a  light  skiff  took  the  place 
of  the  boat,  and,  on  leaving  Strasbourg,  our  travellers 
once  more  took  their  places  in  the  diligence  par  eaii 
in  company  of  University  students  and  of  one 
terriblef  Republican  who  talked  of  nothing  but 
cutting  off  kings'  heads.  At  one  of  the  most 
dangerous  passes  of  the  Rhine  they  came  on  a 
boat  that  had  foundered  the  same  morning,  and 
whose  entire  crew  had  perished.  Their  own  boat- 
man, proud  to  show  off  his  few  words  of  French, 
consoled  them  by  saying  "  que  c'est  seulement 
un  bateau  qui  était  subitement  renversé,  et  tous  les 
peuples  sont  seulement  noyés." 

From  Mayence  to  Cologne — that  part  of  the 
Rhine  which  is  so  marvellously  described  in  the 
third  canto  of  '^  Childe  Harold  ^' — they  were  again 
in  company  with  the  terrible  Germans — smoking, 

*  Letters  \vritten  during  a  short  residence  in  Sweden, 
Norway,  and  Denmark,  1796. 

t  Jane,  in  her  journal,  speaks  of  two  other  passengers — 
one  a  man  "  that  pretended  to  something,"  and  the  other  a 
schoolmaster  who  spoke  a  little  English,  and  who  sang 
German  songs  that  she  much  admired.  "As  we  were  just 
passing  the  dangerous  defile"  (of  the  Rhine),  she  says,  "the 
man  of  pretensions  turned  to  us,  and  said  :  'Allons!  il  faut 
prier  le  bon  Dieu.'  We  laughed  ;  he  answered,  '  Eh  bien  ! 
donc  il  faut  chanter.'  The  schoolmaster  immediately  began, 
and  they  sang  an  animated  German  song,  which  had  a  much 
finer  eft'ect  when  seconded  by  the  breaking  of  the  waves 
over  the  rocks." 


''HISTORY  OF  A    SIX    WEEKS'    TOUR:'     223 

shouting,  and  (worst  of  all  to  English  eyes)  kissing 
each  other. 

Before   their   delighted    eyes    pass   visions   of 
"hills   covered  with  vines  and  trees,  craggy  cliffs 
crowned  by  desolate  towers,  and   wooded  islands 
where  picturesque  ruins  peeped   from  behind  the 
foliage   and   cast   the  shadows  of  their  forms  on 
the    troubled    waters     which     disturbed    without 
deforming  them."     They  left  Bonn,  that  "  loveliest 
paradise    on     earth,"    although    unfortunately   in- 
habited by  such  wretched  specimens  of  the  human 
race,  and  reached  Cologne  by  road.    From  Cologne 
to  Cleves  they  drove   in  a  post-chaise  behind  the 
diligence,  and  accomplished  three  leagues  in  seven 
or  eight  hours  ;   then  continued  their  journey  by 
posting  across  the  monotonous  plains  of  Holland^ 
whose  sole  beauty — a  delightful  verdure — reminded 
them  of  the  green  fields  of  England.     They  em- 
barked at  Rotterdam,  and  then  ensued   a   delay 
of  two  days  at  Marsluys  through  stress  of  weather, 
during  which  Shelley  worked  at  his  romance  of 
"  The  Assassins,"  while  Mary  began  a  tale  entitled 
"  Hate,"  and  Jane  a  kind  of  philosophical  novel 
called  "The    Idiot."      On    September   loth   they 
had   travelled   eight  hundred  miles    for   less  than 
thirty  pounds.     But  they  had  only  one  guinea  left 
in  their  possession. 

At  last,  under  the  guidance  of  an  English 
captain,  their  vessel  crossed  the  bar  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Rhine,  and  on  September  13th  lay  at 
Gravesend  in  sight  of  the  Kentish  hills. 

This  rapid  journey,  amid  scenes  so  various, 
and  seen  as  it  were  in  a  fantastic  mirage,  left  an 
indelible  impression  on  the  mind  of  the  poet. 
He  recurs  to  it  with  beautifying  and  idealising 
touches  in  all  his  great  compositions.  The  living 
memory  of  Nature's  scenes,  troubled  and  calm, 
serene  and  terrible  by  turns,  evoked  in  Shelley 
marvellous  visions  which  followed  him  ceaselessly, 


224    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  P0E7\ 

and  were  depicted  whenever  the  framework  of 
his  poetical  creations  permitted.  In  the  preface  to 
•'  Laon  and  Cythna  "  he  declares^  with  Httle  or  no 
exaggeration  : 

I  have  been  a  wanderer  among  distant  fields.  I  have 
sailed  down  mighty  rivers,  and  seen  the  sun  rise  and  set,  and 
the  stars  come  forth,  whilst  I  have  sailed  night  and  day  down 
a  rapid  stream  among  mountains. 

But,  although  he  was  struck  by  the  grandiose 
aspect  of  Nature,  he  was  equally  impressed  with 
the  desolation  and  ruin  wrought  by  man  ;  with 
the  fatal  effects  of  war  and  invasion  ;  and  these  he 
is  to  depict  with  terrible  strength  in  "  Laon  and 
Cythna/' 

I  have  seen  the  theatre  of  the  more  visible  ravages  of 
tyranny  and  war,  cities  and  villages  reduced  to  scattered 
groups  of  black  and  roofless  houses,  and  the  naked  in- 
habitants sitting  famished  upon  their  desolated  thresholds. 

This  six  weeks'  journey  was  not  lost  to  pos- 
terity ;  to  it  was  due  in  great  measure  "  Alastor  " 
and  the  *' Revolt  of  Islam." 


CHAPTER  XII. 

SHELLEY   IN     LONDON     AND    AT     BISHOPSGATE 

"  ALASTOR  " — 18 14-1816. 

On  his  return  to  London,  in  the  winter  of  18 14-1 5^ 
Shelley  found  himself  materially  and  morally  in  a 
critical  position.  Debts  had  accumulated,  and 
his  father  was  less  than  ever  inclined  to  pay 
them.  His  creditors  were  clamorous,  and  each 
day  brought  fresh  dififîculties.  Still  more  painful 
was  the  alienation  of  the  greater  number  of  his 
London  friends,  Maimouna  included.  Godwin's 
door  was  closed  against  him  ;  yet  the  sage  of 
Skinner  Street  did  not  refuse  to  be  under  pecu- 
niary obligations  to  him  whose  conduct  he  con- 
sidered unpardonable.* 

*  This  strange  attitude  of  Godwin  ended  liy  exasperating- 
Shelley,  and  in  his  correspondence  with  the  philosopher  ot' 
Skinner  Street  he  cannot  conceal  his  bitterness.  He  writes 
under  date  March  6th,  1816  :  "My  astonishment,  and  I  wil? 
confess  when  I  have  been  treated  with  most  harshness  and 
cruelty  by  you,  my  indignation  has  been  extreme,  that, 
knowing  as  you  do  my  nature,  any  considerations  should 
have  prevailed  on  you  to  be  thus  harsh  and  cruel.  I 
lamented  also  over  my  ruined  hopes,  of  all  that  your  genius 
once  taught  me  to  expect  from  your  virtue,  when  I  found  that 
for  yourself,  your  family,  and  your  creditors,  you  would 
submit  to  that  communication  with  me,  which  you  once 
rejected  and  abhorred,  and  which  no  pity  for  my  poverty  or 

Q 


226    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

Hogg  and  Peacock  alone  remained  true  to 
him.  His  relations  with  Harriet  had  been  com- 
plicated by  the  birth  of  a  second  child  named 
Charles  Bysshe,  and  were  only  a  source  of  trouble 
and  annoyance. 

Reading,  writing,  conversation,  discussion  with 
Hogg  or  Peacock,  and  Latin  and  Greek  lessons 
to  Mary,  were  pleasant  diversions  of  his  daily 
recurring  vexations.  After  a  long  day  of  business 
and  fatigue  Shelley  would  return  to  the  Margaret 
Street  lodgings  with  some  new  volume  of  poetry, 
Wordsworth's  "Excursion,"*  or  Byron's  "Lara," 
and  the  evening  was  spent  in  reading  aloud 
ancient  and  modern  prose  and  poetry.  Coleridge, 
Spenser,  Milton,  or  Seneca  were  followed  by 
Godwin  and  Lewis's  tales,  or  the  stories  of  a 
German  disciple  of  Godwin,  Charles  Brockden 
Brown.f  Four  of  these  stories,  according  to 
Peacock,  were  works  that,  together  with  Schiller's 
"Brigands''  and  Goethe's  "Faust,"  exercised  a 
powerful  influence  on  Shelley's  mind  and  charac- 
ter. Some  evenings  were  devoted  to  "  Garnerin's 
Lectures  on  Electricity,  the  Gases,  and  the  Phan- 
tasmagoria," or  to  the  theatre.  In  1814  Edmund 
Kean  appeared  for  the  first  time  on  the  boards 
of  Drury  Lane.  On  October  13th  Shelley  was 
present  at  his  representation  of  Hamlet.  His  first 
impression  of  this  great  actor,  to  whom  he 
subsequently  thought  of  entrusting  the  character 

sufferings,  assumed  willingly  for  you,  could  avail  to  extort. 
Do  not  talk  oi  forgiveness  again  to  me,  for  my  blood  boils 
in  my  veins,  and  my  gall  rises  against  all  that  bears  the 
human  form,  when  I  think  of  what  I,  their  benefactor  and 
ardent  lover,  have  endured  of  enmity  and  contempt  from 
you  and  from  all  mankind." 

*  Mary's  Journal  :  "  Shelley  brings  home  Wordsworth's 
*  Excursion,'  of  which  we  read  a  part  ;  much  disappointed. 
He  is  a  slave." 

t  These  four  novels  of  Brown's  are,  "Wieland,"  "Ormond, 
"  Edgar  Huntley,"  and  "  Arthur  Mervyn." 


SHELLEY  hN  LONDON.  227 

•of  Count   Cenci,  was  unfavourable;    at   the  end 
•of  the  second  act  he  left  the  theatre.* 

To  these  intellectual  pastimes  were  added 
other  forms  of  recreation  :  visits  to  Exeter 
Change,  to  Covent  Garden  Market,  to  Lucien 
Bonaparte's  collection  of  pictures^f  to  walks  by 
the  Serpentine  or  the  Surrey  Canal,  and  often 
to  a  pond  near  Primrose  Hill,  where  Shelley 
■delightedly  sailed  his  paper  boats. 

There  remained  little  leisure  for  composition, 
yet  Shelley  continued  to  work  at  his  novel,  and 
contributed  to  the  December  number  of  the  Critical 
Reviciv  an  article  on  Hogg's  philosophical  novel, 
"  Memoirs  of  Prince  Alexis  Haimatoff"  He 
bitterly  regretted  the  literary  impotence  to  which 
he  was  reduced  by  pecuniary  embarrassments  and 
their  attendant  cares  : 

"One  day,"  writes  Peacock,  "as  we  were  walking  together 
on  the  banks  of  the  Surrey  Canal,  and  discoursing  of  Words- 
worth and  quoting  some  of  his  verses,  Shelley  suddenly  said 
to  me  :  "  Do  you  think  Wordsworth  could  have  written  such 
poetry  if  he  ever  had  dealings  with  money-lenders  ?" 

At  one  period  (from  October  23rd  to  November 
9th)  the  danger  from  the  money-lenders  became 
so  pressing,  that  Shelley,  having  been  warned  in 
time  of  his  impending  arrest,  was  forced  to  leave 
the  St.  Paneras  lodgings  and  part  for  a  while 
from  his  beloved  one.     Bailiffs,  however,  were  on 

*  Mary's  Journal  :  "The  extreme  depravity  and  disgust- 
ing nature  of  the  stage,  the  inefficacy  of  acting  to  encourage 
or  maintain  the  delusion.  The  loathsome  sight  of  men 
personating  characters  which  do  not  and  cannot  belong  to 
them.     Shelley  displeased  with  what  he  saw  of  Kean." 

t  Mary  mentions,  among  these  pictures,  in  her  journal,  a 
"Magdalen,"  by  Greuz2,  and  Carlo  Dolci's  "Four  Evangelists," 
and  in  Newman  Street  there  was  a  statue  of  Theoclea,  "a 
divinity,"  exclaims  Mary,  "that  raises  your  mind  to  all  virtue 
and  excellence  ;  I  never  beheld  anything  half  so  wonderfully 
beautiful." 

Q    2 


228    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

his  track,  and  he  took  refuge  sometimes  with 
ihis  friend  Peacock,  at  others  in  various  hotels, 
where  he  contrived,  with  every  imaginable  pre- 
caution, to  receive  short  visits  from  Mary,  with 
whom  he  was  in  close  correspondence  in  order 
.  to  keep  her  informed  of  daily  events,  and  to- 
arrange  places  and  times  of  meeting.  These 
letters,  which  have  been  published  for  the  first 
time  by  Mr.  Dowden,  while  revealing  Shelley's 
state  of  agitation  and  perplexity,  depict  still 
more  vividly  his  ardent  love  in  that  time  of 
bitter  trial.  We  give  a  few  extracts  full  of 
passionate  adoration  : 

This  separation  is  a  calamity  not  to  be  endured 
patiently  ;  I  cannot  support  your  absence.  I  thought  that  it 
would  be  less  painful  to  me.  .  .  .  But,  my  beloved,  this  will 
not  last.  .  .  .  We  shall  soon  be  restored  to  each  other.  The 
wretchedness  of  our  separation,  I  am  convinced,  will  endow 

me  with  eloquence  and  energies  adequate  to  the  peril 

Light  of  my  life,  my  very  spirit  of  hope  .  .  .  when,  when 
shall  I  meet  you  ?  .  .  .  Give  my  love  to  Jane.  1  think  she 
has  a  sincere  affection  for  you. 

E/iOV  KpirepLov  tu>v  ayadaiv  roSe. 

...  I  wander  restlessly  about.  I  cannot  read  or  even> 
write  ;  but  this  will  soon  pass.  I  should  not  inflict  my  own 
Mary  with  my  dejection  ;  she  has  sufficient  cause  for  disturb- 
ance to  need  consolation  from  me.  Well,  we  shall  meet 
to-day.  I  cannot  write,  but  I  love  you  with  so  unalterable  su 
love  that  the  contemplation  of  me  will  serve  for  a  letter  .  .  .. 
l\Iy  dearest,  best  Mary,  let  me  see  your  sweet  eyes  full  of 
happiness  when  we  meet.  All  will  be  well.  I  hope  to  have 
deserved  many  kisses.  .  .  .  Know  you,  my  best  Mary,  that  I 
feel  myself,  in  your  absence,  almost  degraded  to  the  level  of 
the  vulgar  and  impure.  I  feel  their  vacant  stiff  eyeballs 
fixed  upon  me,  until  I  seem  to  have  been  infected  with  their 
loathsome  meaning — to  inhale  a  sickness  that  subdues  me  to 
languor.  Oh  !  those  redeeming  eyes  of  Mary,  that  they 
might  beam  upon  me  before  1  sleep  !  Praise  my  forbearance, 
oh  1  beloved  one — that  I  do  not  rashly  fly  to  you,  and  at 
least  secure  a  moment's  bliss.  Wherefore  should  I  delay  ? 
Do  you  not  long  to  meet  me  ?  All  that  is  exalted  and 
buoyant  in  my  nature  urges  me  towards  you,  reproaches  me 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  229 

sivith  cold  delay,  laughs  at  all  fear,  and  spurns  to  dream  of 
prudence.     Why  am  I  not  with  you  ? 

Alas  !  we  must  not  meet. 

.  .  .  How  hard  and  stubborn  must  be  the  spirit  that 
■does  not  confess  you  to  be  the  subtlest  and  most  exquisitely 
fashioned  intelligence  ;  that  among  women  there  is  no  equal 
jnind  to  yours  !  And  I  possess  this  treasure  !  How  beyond 
all  estimate  is  my  felicity  1  Yes  !  1  am  encouraged  ;  I  care 
■not  what  happens  ;  I  am  most  happy. 

My  beloved  Mary,  I  know  not  whether  these  transient 
meetings  produce  not  as  much  pain  as  pleasure.  What  have 
I  said  ?  1  do  not  mean  it.  I  will  not  forget  the  sweet 
moments  when  I  saw  your  eyes — the  divine  rapture  of  the 
few  and  fleeting  kisses. 

.  .  .  Mary,  love,  we  must  be  reunited.  .  .  .  Your 
thoughts  alone  can  waken  mine  to  energy  ;  my  mind  without 
yours  is  dead  and  cold,  as  the  dark  midnight  river  when  the 
moon  is  down.  It  seems  as  if  you  alone  could  shield  me 
from  impurity  and  vice.  If  I  was  absent  from  you  long,  I 
should  shudder  with  horror  at  myself;  my  understanding 
becomes  undisciplined  without  you.  .  .  .  Evidently  you 
surpass  me  in  originality  and  simplicity  of  mind.  How 
divinely  sweet  a  task  it  is  to  imitate  each  other's  excellences, 
and  each  moment  to  become  wiser  in  this  surpassing  love, 
so  that  constituting  but  on  being,  all  real  knowledge  may  be 
comprised  in  the  maxim  yvu>6i  atavrov  (Know  thyself)  with 
infinite  more  justice  than  in  its  narrow  and  common  applica- 
tion. 

How  terrible  if  month  after  month  I  should  pass  with- 
out you,  or  only  to  see  you  by  snatches  and  moments.  .  .  . 
Love  me,  my  dearest,  best  Mary,  love  me  in  confidence  and 
.security  ;  do  not  think  of  me  as  one  in  danger,  or  even  as 
one  in  sorrow.  The  remembrance  and  expectation  of  such 
sweet  moments  as  we  experienced  last  night,  consoles, 
strengthens,  and  redeems  me  from  despondency.  There  is 
■eternity  in  those  moments  ;  they  contain  the  true  elixir  of 
immortal  life. 

My  own  beloved  Mary,  do  I  not  love  you?  Is  not 
your  image  the  only  consolation  to  my  lonely  and  bcnii^hted 
■condition  ?  Do  1  not  love  you  with  a  most  unextinguishable 
love  ;  a  feeling  tliat  well  compensates  for  the  altered  looks 
of  those  who  love  none  but  themselves  ?  What  sentiment 
but  disgust  and  indignation  is  excited  by  the  desertion  of 
those  who  fly  because  they  think  constancy  imprudent  ! 

The  feeling  is  sweet,  most  ennobling,  and  producing  a 
most  celestial  balm,  with  which  the  sick  and  weary  spirit 
reposes  upon  one  who  may  not  be  doubted  ;  to  whom  the 
.slightest  taint  of  suspicion  is  death — irrevocable  annihilation. 


230    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

To-morrow,  blest  creature,  I  shall  clasp  you  again— ^^r 
ever.  Shall  it  be  so  ?  This  is  the  ancient  language,  that 
love  alone  can  translate. 

So  my  beloved  boasts  that  she  is  more  perfect  in  the 
practice  than  I  in  the  theory  of  love.  Is  it  thus?  No, 
sweet  Mary,  you  only  meant  that  you  loved  me  more  than 
you  could  express  ;  that  reasoning  was  too  cold  and  slow 
for  the  rapid  fervour  of  your  conceptions.  Perhaps,  in 
truth,  Peacock  had  infected  me  ;  my  disquisitions  were 
cold — my  subtleties  unmeaningly  refined  ;  and  I  am  a  harp 
responsive  to  every  wind — the  scented  gale  of  summer  can 
wake  it  to  a  sweet  melody,  but  rough  cold  blasts  draw  forth 
discordance  and  jarring  sounds. 

My  own  love,  did  I  not  appear  happy  to-day  ?  For  a 
few  moments  I  was  entranced  in  most  delicious  pleasure  ;, 
yet  I  was  absent  and  dejected.  I  knew  not  when  we  might 
meet  again,  when  I  might  hold  you  in  my  arms  and  gaze  on 
your  dear  eyes  at  will,  and  snatch  momentary  kisses  in  the 
midst  of  one  happy  hour,  and  sport  in  security  with  my 
entire  and  unbroken  bliss.  .  .  .  There  are  moments  in  your 
absence,  my  love,  when  the  bitterness  with  which  I  regret 
the  unrecoverable  time  wasted  in  unprofitable  solitude  and 
worldly  cares  is  a  most  painful  weight  ;  you  alone  reconcile 
me  to  myself  and  to  my  beloved  hopes.* 

*  Mary's  own  letters  are  no  less  passionate  and  tender. 
The  following  extract  will  be  read  with  interest  : 

"  Tuesday,  October  2Sth,  1814. 

'*  For  what  a  minute  did  I  see  you  yesterday  !  Is  this 
the  way,  my  beloved,  we  are  to  live  till  the  6th  ?  In  ihe 
morning  when  I  wake  I  turn  to  look  for  you.  Dearest 
Shelley,  you  are  solitary  and  uncomfortable.  Why  cannot  I 
be  with  you  to  cheer  you  and  to  press  you  to  my  heart  ? 
Ah  !  my  love,  you  have  no  friends  ;  why  then  should  you  be 
torn  from  the  only  one  who  has  affection  for  you  .?  But  I 
shall  see  you  to-night,  and  this  is  the  hope  I  shall  live  on 
through  the  day.  Be  happy,  dear  Shelley,  and  think  of  me. 
Why  do  I  say  this,  dearest,  and  only  one  ?  I  know  how 
tenderly  you  love  me,  and  how  you  repine  at  your  absence 
from  me.  When  shall  we  be  free  from  fear  of  treachery  ? 
...  I  was  so  dreadfully  tired  yesterday  that  I  was  obliged 
to  take  a  coach  home.  Forgive  this  extravagance,  but  I  am 
so  very  weak  at  present.  ...  A  morning's  rest,  however, 
will  set  me  quite  right  again  ;  I  shall  be  well  when  I  meet 
you  this  evening.  I  send  you  'Diogenes'  [probably  a 
translation  of  Wieland's  'Diogenes'],  as  you  have  no  books." 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  231 

On  November  9th,  all  danger  being  over, 
through  arrangements  entered  into  by  Shelley 
the  lovers  were  once  more  united,  and,  leaving" 
the  St.  Paneras  lodgings,  removed  their  household 
goods  to   Nelson   Square. 

The  early  months  of  the  year  181 5  showed 
a  somewhat  clearer  horizon.  Old  Sir  Bysshe 
died  on  January  6th,  and,  after  long  and  tedious 
negotiations  between  Shelley  and  his  father,  an 
arrangement  was  made  by  which  he  agreed  to  cede 
certain  inherited  rights,  and  in  return  was  ta 
receive  an  annual  income  of  ;!^iooo.*  He  at 
once  appropriated  a  proportion  of  that  sum  to 
a  provision  for  Harriet,  allowing  her  an  annuity 
of  two  hundred  pounds,  and  in  April  he  handed 
over  one  thousand  pounds  to  Godwin. 

Meanwhile,  the  excitement,  privations,  and 
anxiety  of  the  closing  months  of  18 14,  had 
seriously  affected  his  health  ;  he  believed  himself 
to  be  attacked  by  pulmonary  consumption,  but 
happily  the  danger  passed  awa5^  It  is  probable 
that  in  the  state  of  melancholy  induced  by  ill- 
health  he  composed  the  "  Stanzas  on  Death,"  and 
conceived  the  first  idea  of  "  Alastor."  Another 
poignant  trouble  also  tried  his  weakened  consti- 
tution. On  February  22nd,  a  seven-months  babe, 
a  delicate  little  girl,  was  born  to  Mary  ;  but  not- 
withstanding the  tenderest  care,  the  infant  died 
on  March  6th.  In  order  to  give  any  idea  of  the 
parents'  agonising  grief,  it  would  be  needful  to 
transcribe  their  journal,  from  which  Mr.  Dowden 
has  quoted  portions  dating  from  February  22nd 
to  March  20th.       All  Europe    was   ringing   with 

*  Mary  relates  in  her  journal  how  Shelley,  on  hearing  of 
his  grandfather's  death,  went  down  to  Field  Place  to  attempt 
a  reconciliation  with  his  father.  He  was  refused  admittance, 
so  sat  himself  down  outside  the  door  of  his  former  home, 
and  consoled  himself  with  reading  "Comus"  from  a  pocket 
edition  of  Milton. 


2J2     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Napoleon's  return  to  France,  but  scarcely  an  echo 
is  found  in  their  journal  : 

"  March  i. — Bonaparte  invades  France."  All 
their  thoughts,  their  souls,  are  centred  on  a  cradle 
that  will  soon  be  empty.  Books,  and  an  occa- 
sional visit  from  Hogg  and  Peacock,  constitute 
their  only  diversion  from  that  absorbing  anxiety. 
After  the  babe's  death,  the  journal  contains  but 
a  funereal  chant.  "  March  9. — Still  think  about 
my  little  dead  baby.''  "  March  19. — Dream  that 
my  little  baby  came  to  life  again,  that  it  had  only 
been  cold,  and  that  we  rubbed  it  before  the  fire 
and  it  lived.  Awake  and  find  no  baby.  I  think 
about  the  little  thing  all  day.  Not  in  good  spirits. 
Shelley  is  very  unwell."  That  Mary's  feelings 
were  shared  by  Shelley  we  cannot  doubt,  and  we 
possess  indisputable  proof  in  that  passage  of 
"  Laon  and  Cythna,"  wherein  he  describes  so 
exquisitely  the  birth  and  death  of  the  babe,  and 
Mary's  dream.  Such  emotions  could  not  be 
so  touchingly  described  unless  they  had  been 
experienced. 

However  perfect  the  union  of  mind  and  heart 
between  Shelley  and  Mary,  a  slight  cloud  never- 
theless obscured  their  happiness,  caused  by  the 
abiding  presence  of  Jane  Clairmont  (Claire)  in 
their  home.  Shelley's  attentions  to  her,  their 
frequent  walks  together  when  Mary  was  unable 
to  accompany  them,  their  reading  "  Pastor  Fido  '' 
and  "  Orlando  Furioso  "  together,  soon  awoke  a 
very  natural  jealousy  in  Mary's  sensitive  heart. 
Yet  it  was  difficult  to  get  rid  of  a  friend  who 
had  been  so  true  under  trial,  who  was  so  devoted 
to  Shelley's  interests,  and  who  was  so  attractive 
by  her  talents,  her -qualities,  and  even  her  faults. 
Mrs.  Godv/in,  who  thought  her  an  objectionable 
companion  for  Fanny,  was  unwilling  to  receive 
her  in  Skinner  Street  ;  Shelley's  house  seemed 
to    be   her   only    resource.     But    Mary    felt    too 


SHELLEY  /iV  LONDON.  233 

îceenly  on  the  subject  to  bear  \o\vg  delay  ;  and 
after  much  discussion  and  hesitation,  it  was 
agreed  that  Claire  should  take  up  her  abode 
with  Mrs.  Bicknall,  who  owned  a  charming  cot- 
tage at  Lynmouth.  The  departure  of  Shelley's 
friend  is  chronicled  in  Mary's  journal  with  a 
satisfaction  and  joy  she  does  not  attempt  to 
conceal  : 

Friday,  May  12. — Shelley  and  his  friend  (Claire)  have  a 
]ast  conversation. 

May  \T^. — Claire  goes  ;  Shelley  walks  with  her.  Charles 
Clairmont  comes  to  breakfast — talk.  Shelley  goes  out  with 
him,  .  .  •.  Jefferson  (Hogc^)  does  not  come  fill  five.  Get 
very  anxious  about  Shelley  ;  go  out  to  meet  him.  .  .  . 
.Shelley  returns  at  half-past  six  ;  the  business  is  finished. 
After  dinner  Shelley  is  very  tired.  .  .  .  I bci^in  a  new  journat 
^uith  our  regeneration. 

Shelley,  while  estimating  Claire  at  her  true 
worth,  was  nevertheless  attached  to  her,  and 
must  have  regretted  the  necessity  of  the  sacri- 
fice he  had  made  for  the  sake  of  peace.  The 
passing  cloud  between  the  two  women,  and 
their  subsequent  early  reconciliation,  form  the 
ground-work  of  his  domestic  idyll,  "  Rosalind 
and    Helen." 

During  their  sad  separation  of  the  preceding 
year,  Mary  on  one  occasion  wrote  to  Shelley  : 

Oh  !  how  I  long  to  be  at  our  dear  home,  where  nothing 
can  trouble  us,  neither  friends  nor  enemies  1  .  .  .  Nantgwilt  ! 
do  you  not  wish  to  be  settled  there,  in  a  house  you  know, 
love,  with  your  own  Mary,  nothing  to  disturb  you,  studying, 
walking  ? 

Shelley,  too,  was  anxious  to  fulfil  Mary's  wish. 
He  was  as  impatiently  desirous  as  herself  to 
escape  from  London.  Part  of  the  summer  was 
passed  by  him  in  a  tour  along  the  south  coast 
of  Devon  in  search  of  a  retired  and  picturesque 
retreat.  Meanwhile  Mary  was  staying  at  Clifton, 
and  besought  him  not -to  prolong  his  absence. 


234    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET 

"  To-morrow,"  she  writes,  "  is  the  2Sth  of  July  "  (the 
anniversary  of  their  flight  to  Dover).  "  Dearest,  ought  we  not 
to  be  together  on  that  day?  Indeed  we  ought,  my  love,  as  I 
shall  shed  some  tears  to  think  we  are  not.  Do  not  be  angry, 
dear  love  ;  your  Pecksie  is  a  good  girl,  and  is  quite  well 
now  again,  except  a  headache  when  she'  waits  so  anxiously 
for  her  love's  letters.  .  .  . 

"  My  dear,  dear  love,  I  most  earnestly  and  with  tearful 
eyes  beg  that  T  may  come  to  you,  if  you  do  not  like  to  leave 
the  searches  after  a  house." 

At  last,  in  the  month  of  August,  he  found 
a  suitable  house  at  Bishopsgate,  on  the  borders 
of  Windsor  Park,  not  far  from  the  Thames,  and 
in  that  house  they  immediately  established  their 
home,  and  there  remained  until  late  spring  in 
1816,  The  period  of  their  sojourn  at  Bishopsgate 
is  one  of  the  most  tranquil  and  happy  in  Shelley's 
life.  At  the  end  of  August,  in  company  with 
Mary,  Peacock,*  and  Charles  Clairmont,t  Shelley 
boated  up  the  river  as  far  as  Lechlade  and 
Cricklade  (Gloucestershire),  and  to  that  excursion 
we  owe  the  lines  on  the  churchyard  in  Lechlade, 
"  A  Summer  Evening  Churchyard,"  which,  although 
still  melancholy  in  sentiment,  are  sweeter  and 
calmer,  as  was  the  poet's  own  spirit  at  that  epoch. 
Death  to  him  is  no  longer  terrible  ;  no  longer  is 
the  stroke  of  death  frightful  to  one  whose  brain 
is  not  encircled  by  nerves  of  steel;  he  hears  the 
dead  "  sleeping  in  their  sepulchres  and  moulder- 

*  Five  years  before,  Peacock  had  sung  the  glories  of  the 
Thames  in  verse. 

t  Charles  Clairmont  gave  a  detailed  account  of  this 
excursion  in  a  letter  to  his  sister  Claire,  to  be  found  in 
Mr.  Dowden's  work.  He  thus  describes  their  visit  to 
Oxford  :  "We  arrived  (at  Oxford)  about  seven  in  the  evening, 
and  stopped  till  four  the  next  day.  .  .  .  We  saw  the  Bodleian 
Library,  the  Clarendon  Press,  and  walked  through  the  quad- 
rangles of  the  different  colleges.  We  visited  the  very  rooms 
where  the  two  noted  infidels,  Shelley  and  Hogg,  pored, 
with  the  incessant  and  the  unwearied  application  of  the 
alchymist,  over  the  certified  and  natural  boundaries  of 
human  knowledge." 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  235 

ing  as  they  sleep — a  thrilling  sound. '^  "Thus 
solemnised  and  softened,  death  is  mild,  and 
terrorless  as  this  serenest  night/'  and  "  loveliest 
dreams"  keep  "perpetual  watch"  on  its  '^breath- 
less sleep,"  Already  we  hear  the  accents  of 
"  Alastor." 

A  few  days  after  his  return  to  Bishopsgate, 
Shelley  wrote  to  Hogg  : 

I  found  your  letter  on  ni)-  return  from  a  water  ex- 
cursion on  the  Thames,  the  particulars  of  which  will  be 
recounted  in  another  letter.  The  exercise  and  dissipation 
of  mind  attached  to  such  an  expedition  have  produced  so 
favourable  an  etiect  upon  my  health,  that  my  habitual  dejection 
and  irritability  have  almost  deserted  me,  and  I  can  devote 
six  hours  of  the  day  to  study  without  difficulty.  I  have  been 
engaged  lately  in  the  commencement  of  several  literary 
plans,  which,  if  my  present  temper  of  mind  endures,  I  shall 
probably  complete  in  the  winter.  I  have  consequently 
deserted  Cicero,  or  proceed  but  slowly  with  his  philosophic 
dialogues.  ...  I  have  been  induced  by  one  of  tîie  subjects 
I  am  now  pursuing  to  consult  Bayle.  I  think  he  betrays 
great  obliquity  of  understanding  and  coarseness  of  feeling. 
.  .  .  No  events,  as  you  know,  disturb  our  tranquillity. 

Of  the  various  works  planned  by  Shelley  in  the 
happy  retirement'  of  Bishopsgate  only  "Alastor" 
was  completed.  "Now  at  last,"  exclaim  the 
critics,  "  we  have  the  real,  the  immortal  Shelley  !  " 
Mr.  Rossetti,  indeed,  justly  compares  it  with 
"  Prometheus  Unbound,''  and  "  The  Cenci."  It 
is  certain  that  between  "Alastor"  and  "Queen 
Mab  "  there  is  an  abyss.  It  has  been  said  of 
Chateaubriand,  "What  remains  to  us  of  him  ?" — 
"Rene."  Did  "Alastor"  alone  remain  to  us,  it 
would  be  sufficient  to  rank  its  author  among  the 
very  greatest  poets  who  have  sung  and  wept  for 
us.  Its  dominant  tone  is  not  to  be  found  in 
"Queen  Mab" — a  tone  of  dreamy  and  almost 
despairing  sadness,  which  is  the  more  poignant 
and  penetrating  for  being  mingled  with  the  most 
brilliant  and  lifelike  descriptions  of  Nature. 


-36     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

"  Alastor  "  is  the  first  idealised  autobiography 
of  Shelley  ;  the  outcome  of  a  psychological  moment 
in  which  the  discouragement  engendered  by  the 
disenchanting  contact  of  a  real  and  an  ideal  world 
takes  complete  hold  of  the  soul,  and  includes  the 
whole  universe  in  its  own  melancholy,  Alastor*  is 
the  embodiment  of  the  "■  Spirit  of  Solitude/'  of 
that  evil  genius  which  separates  a  soul  from  its 
fellows  ;  the  demon  from  whom  Shelley  suffered 
so  much  from  the  moment  when,  declaring  war 
against  every  superstition,  prejudice,  and  hypocrisy, 
he  saw  the  world  turn  its  back  upon  him  and 
reply  to  his  words  of  blessing  and  salvation  by 
its  anathema  and  hate.  Mingled  with  the  bitter- 
ness of  disillusion  was  his  presentiment  of  approach- 
ing death  ;  and  with  his  heart  still  bleeding  at  the 
terrible  separation  exacted  of  him  by  his  ideal, 
the  poet  journeys  through  the  half-seen  marvels 
of  the  world  towards  his  grave — a  supreme  intel- 
lect whose  loss  is  "  too  deep  for  tears,"  and  who 
will  leave  a  void  in  the  senseless  universe. 
Shelley  would  not  have  belonged  to  his  epoch 
had  he  not  experienced  that  moral  unrest,  born 
of  the  eighteenth  century  and  of  the  Revolution, 
which  had  already  been  diversely  expressed  in 
"Werther,"  in  "René,"  and  in  "Oberman."  If 
there  be  any  resemblance  to  these,  it  is  assuredly 
to  Senancour's  hero.  Alastor  is  not  embittered 
like  Werther  ;  he  is  altogether  unlike  the  "  beau 
ténébreux  "  of  Chateaubriand  ;  nor  has  he  the 
fatuity  of  "  Childe  Harold."  He  is  the  poet- 
Oberman. 

In  Senancour's  "Rêveries"  (1798)  there  is  a 
similar  yearning  for  the  regeneration  of  man- 
kind. 

The  misfortune  of  Shelley's  hero,  Shelley's 
own  misfortune,  and  the  misfortune,  we  will  add, 

*  The  word  is  taken  from  ^schylus. 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  23.7 

of  every  poet  worthy  of  the  name,  is  the  in- 
ability to  find  in  any  created  being  the  realisa- 
tion of, their  subHme  ideal.  "Alastor^'  has  been 
rightly  compared  with  the  "  Endymion  "  of 
Keats.  Endymion  also  personifies  a  soul  in 
search  of  its  ideal,  but  unlike  the  hero  of 
"Alastor"  it  succeeds  in  finding  the.  object  of 
its  search.*  The  spirit  of  Alastor  is  quite  op- 
posite. Though  Shelley  may  cord^mn  the 
egoism  of  the  solitary  idealist,  he  nevertheless 
prefers  the  fate  of  the  poet  dying  a  victim  to 
his  quenchless  thirst,  but  purified  and  redeemed 
by  death,  to  the  mournful  destiny  of  those  cold 
and  impassive  souls  who,  "  deluded  by  no  generous 
error,  instigated  by  no  sacred  thirst  of  doubtful 
knowledge,  duped  by  no  illustrious  superstition, 
loving  nothing  on  this  earth,  and  cherishing  no 
hopes  beyond,  yet  keep  aloof  from  sympathies 
■with  their  kind." 

The  winter  at  Bishopsgate  was  to  the  poet 
a  season  of  self-communion,  and  of  melancholy 
tempered  by  love,  that  is  marvellously  reproduced 
in  his  poem.  His  solitude  was  occasionally 
broken  by  visits  from  such  friends  as  Hoggv 
Peacock,  and  a  Quaker  physician.  Dr.  Pope,  with 
whom  Shelley  discussed  theology  in  amicable 
fashion.  "  I  like  to  hear  thee  talk,  friend  Shelley  ; 
I  see  thou  art  very  deep,"  We  catch  an  echo 
of  those  serene  discussions  in  the  dialogue  pub- 
lished by  Shelley  in  1814,  "A  Refutation  of 
Deism,^^  which  we  have  already  mentioned. 

Meanwhile  he  was  reading  Greek  authors 
with  Hogg  and  Peacock,  and  teaching  Mary  Latin. 

*  "Alastor"  was  published  at  the  beginning  of  18 16,  with 
"Stanzas  to  Coleridge,"  Stanzas,  April,  1S14,  "  Mutability," 
"Death,"  "A  Summer  Evening  Ciiurchyard,"  "Lines  to 
Wordsworth,"  the  translation  of  "  A  Sonnet  by  Dante,"  a 
translation  of  some  lines  from  "  Moschus,"  and  the  "  Demon 
of  the  World,"  from  "  Queen  Mab." 


238     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   TLLE  POET 

"Alaiy,"  he  wrote  to  Hojrg  in  September,  1 815,  "has 
finished  the  fifth  book  of  the  '  /Eneid,'*  and  her  progress  in 
Latin  is  such  as  to  satisfy  my  best  expectations." 

In  her  Biographical  and  Critical  Notes  on 
Shelley,  Mary  informs  us  that  the  poet  felt  within 
himself  an  equal  inclination  for  "poetry  and 
metaphysical  discussions,"  and  that  "resolving  on 
the  former,"  he  engaged  "in  the  study  of  the 
poets  of  Greece,  Italy,  and  England,"  without 
neglecting  the  "  constant  perusal  of  portions  of 
the  Old  Testament  —  the  Psalms,  the  Book  of 
Job,"  the  Prophet  Isaiah,  and  others — the  sublime 
poetry  of  which  filled  him  with  delight.'^ 

There  remains  to  us  only  a  fragment  which 
can  be  referred  to  Shelley's  passion  for  meta- 
physics, but  it  is  sufficient  almost  to  cause  regret 
that  poetry  should  have  suddenly  stayed  his 
hand.  His  philosophical  essays  belong  to  that 
year  (181 5),  and  treat  of  his  favourite  subjects 
of  meditation,  i.e.  Life^  Death,  a  Future  State, 
Love,  the  Human  Mind,  the  Phenomena  of 
Dreams,  etc.  It  is  evident  throughout  that 
Berkeley's  idealism  has  prevailed  over  the  mate- 
rialistic tendencies  contracted  by  Shelley  when 
studying  the  French  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth 
century  ;  he  is  a  convinced  upholder  of  the  "  Intel- 
lectual System."  No  philosopher  has  so  loudly 
condemned  the  enervating  doctrines  of  mate- 
rialism, or  exalted  so  enthusiastically  the  only 
reality  which  in  his  eyes  is  deserving  of  the 
name.  Spirit  ;  the  reality  of  external  things  being 
of  "  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of." 

The  shocking  absurdities  of  the  popular  philosophy  of 
mind  and  matter,  its  fatal  consequences  in  morals,  and  their 
violent  dogmatism  concerning  the  source  of  all  things,  had 


*  Shelley  himself  at  this  time  was  reading  Lucan's 
"  Pharsalia,"  "  a  poem,  as  it  appears  to  me,"  he  says,  "  of 
wonderful  genius,  and  transcending  Virgil." 


SHELLEY  IN  LONDON.  239 

•early  conducted  me  to  materialism.  This  materialism  is  a 
seducing  system  to  young  and  superficial  minds.  It  allows 
its  disciples  to  talk,  and  dispenses  them  from  thinking.  But 
I  was  discontented  with  such  a  view  of  life  as  it  afforded  ; 
man  is  a  being  of  high  aspirations  "  looking  both  before  and 
after,"  whose  "  thoughts  wander  through  eternity,"  dis- 
claiming alliance  with  transience  and  decay  ;  incapable  of 
imagining  to  himself  annihilation  ;  existing  but  in  the  future 
and  the  past  ;  being  not  what  he  is,  but  what  he  has 
been  and  shall  be.  Whatever  may  be  his  true  and  final 
destination,  there  is  a  spirit  within  him  at  enmity  with 
nothingness  and  dissolution.  This  is  the  character  of  all 
life  and  being.  Each  is  at  once  the  centre  and  the  cir- 
cumference ;  the  point  to  which  all  things  are  referred,  and 
the  line  in  which  all  things  are  contained.  .  .  . 

The  spiritual  chain  which  links  all  creatures 
together,  and  which  places  each  individual  soul 
in  actual  contact  with  the  soul  of  the  universe, 
is   Love. 

In  the  motion  of  the  very  leaves  of  spring,  in  the  blue  air, 
there  is  then  found  a  secret  correspondence  with  our  heart. 
There  is  eloquence  in  the  tongueless  wind,  and  a  melody  in 
the  flowing  brooks,  and  the  rustling  of  the  reeds  beside  them, 
which,  by  their  inconceivable  relation  to  something  within 
the  soul,  awaken  the  spirits  to  a  dance  of  breathless  rapture, 
and  bring  tears  of  mysterious  tenderness  to  the  eyes,  like  the 
enth.usiasm  of  patriotic  success,  or  the  voice  of  one  beloved 
singing  to  you  alone. 

Metaphysics  such  as  these  stand  very  near 
to  poetry,  and  Shelley  did  well  in  abandoning 
deduction  and  dogmatism,  to  clothe  his  idealism 
in  the  lyrical  language  that  alone  was  worthy 
of  it.  What  are  Plato,  Berkeley,  and  Male- 
branche  but  poets  ;  and  what  are  metaphysics 
themselves  but  poetry  and  dreams  .'' 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

JOURNEY   TO  AND    SOJOURN    IN    SWITZERLAND- 
SHELLEY  AND   BYRON. 

On  January  24th^  1816,  at  the  very  time  that 
Byron^s  separation  from  his  wife  was  the  scandal 
of  the  day,  a  child  was  born  to  gladden  the 
quiet  home  at  Bishopsgate.  He  received  the  name 
of  William,  after  Mary's  father. 

There  was  so  much  resemblance  between  the 
lives  and  circumstances  of  the  two  poets  that 
it  was  fitting  they  should  meet.  Both,  too,  were 
under  the  ban  of  public  opinion. 

Shelley  was  only  waiting  for  an  opportunity 
to  make  the  acquaintance  of  an  author  of  whom 
he  had  never  lost  sight  since  the  time  when  he 
had  quoted  the  '^ Hours  of  Idleness*'  in  "St. 
Irvyne."  He  had  sent  him  a  copy  of  "  Queen 
Mab,"  and  Byron  was  said  to  admire  the  poem^, 
while  he  disclaimed  the  authorship  of  the  Notes. 

An  entirely  fortuitous  circumstance  brought 
them  together. 

At  that  time  Byron  was  on  the  Committee 
of  Management  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  en- 
deavouring to  infuse  fresh  life  into  the  drama 
by  new  masterpieces  that  neither  Walter  Scott, 
Mathurin,    Coleridge,    nor    any   one    else    would 


SOJOURN  IN  SWITZERLAND.  241 

write  for  him;  offering  plays  by  Sotheby  or 
Burgess  which  the  Committee  enthusiastically 
refused  ;  harassed  by  authors  and  authoresses, 
milliners  and  Irish  adventurers,  by  dancing 
masters  and  actors,  "ungovernable  people"  ;  quar- 
relling over  ballet-girls,  and  dining  and  drinking 
with  Sheridan,  Kinnaird,  and  others. 

One  morning  an  elegant  girl,  rather  small, 
but  with  marvellous  shoulders  and  arms,  lovely 
hands  and  feet,  with  the  voice  of  a  siren,  and  with 
<dark  hair  and  passionate  dark  eyes,  introduced 
herself  to  Byron.  She  was  Jane  Clairmont,  or 
*'  Claire.'^  She  had  come  to  solicit  the  poet's 
interest  in  order  to  obtain  an  engagement  at 
the  theatre,  and  Byron  interested  himself  so 
much,  that  he  immediately  made  her  his  mis- 
tress and  arranged  to  meet  her  at  Geneva. 
While  Byron,  who  set  out  on  April  25th,  was 
travelling  in  princely  fashion  towards  Geneva, 
by  way  of  Flanders  and  the  Rhine,  Shelley, 
who  left  England  early  in  May,  accompanied 
by  Claire,  Mary,  and  the  little  William  and  his 
■nurse,  was  journeying  for  the  second  time  to 
Paris. 

We  must  now  record  the  commencement  of 
a  most  romantic  and  mysterious  occurrence  in 
our  poet's  romantic  life. 

The  night  before  Shelley's  departure  from 
London  (the  story  was  related  to  Byron  and 
Medwin  by  him,  shortly  before  his  death),  he 
received  a  visit  from  a  married  lady,  '^  young, 
handsome,  and  of  noble  connections,"  who  con- 
fessed to  hini  that  she,  although  he  was  personally 
unknown  to  her,  had  long  adored  him  in  her 
secret  soul,  and  had  resolved  to  belong  to,  and 
follow  him  to  the  ends  of  the  world.  Shelley 
explained  to  her  that  he  was  not  free  to  dispose 
of  hirniclt,  softening  his  refusal  as  far  as  possible, 
aîkd    received    the    adieux   of   his   beautiful    and 


242     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

interesting  visitor-.  Thenceforth,  she  followed 
in  his  footsteps,  traced  him  to  Switzerland,  back 
to  England,  then  to  Italy,  and  died  at  Naples, 
to  Shelley's  inconsolable  grief.  Most  of  his 
friends  and  biographers  are  inclined  to  look  upon 
this  sad  and  gentle  lady  who  follows  the  loved 
footsteps,  as  an  imaginary  incarnation  of  the 
ideal  woman  whom  he  vainly  sought  in  flesh 
and  blood  ;  in  one  word,  as  a  poetic  hallucination. 
But  although  we  are  ready  to  acknowledge,  as 
we  have  already  stated  in  our  notice  of  Shelley's 
novels,  that  he  was  apt  to  introduce  the  creatures 
of  his  imagination  into  the  realities  of  life,  and 
that  in  particular,  certain  passages  in  his  poems, 
even  those  which,  like  "  Alastor,"  *  were  written 
before  the  journey  to  Switzerland,  contain 
striking  allusions  to  the  mysterious  sympathies 
which  attract  "  the  young  maidens  "  to  Shelley  ; 
still  it  is  difficult  to  accept  hallucination  as  an 
explanation  of  incidents  so  prolonged,  so  precise, 
and  so  extraordinary.  Moreover,  as  we  shall  see, 
there  are  mysterious  allusions  in  the  poems 
written  while  at  Naples,  that  can  hardly  be 
explained  except  by  accepting  the  truth  of 
Medwin's  narrative.  That  the  sceptical  Byron 
did  not  so  accept  it,  is  not  surprising,  and  no 
more  convinces  us  than  do  the  gratuitous  as- 
surances of  Mr.  Jeaffreson.t 

Unprovided  with  letters  of  introduction,  and 
without  acquaintances  in  Paris,  the  travellers 
were  compelled  to  wait  at  their  hotel  until  the 
French  officials,  who  had  become  suspicious  since 
the  escape  of  La  Valette,  should  please  to  counter- 
sign their  passports.  They  found  the  French  less 
courteous   to   English   folk   than    before   the  last 

»  Vol.  I.,  p.  84. 

t  Mr.  Rossetti,  without  coming  to  a  positive  conclusion, 
admits  the  great  probability  of  the  truth  of  the  story. 
Mr.  Dowden  is  of  the  same  opinion. 


SOJOURN  IN-  SWITZERLAND.]  245 

invasion  of  the  Allies  ;     ill-humour    and   discon- 
tent were  visible  on  every  countenance. 

Nor  is  it  wonderful  that  they  should  regard  the  subjects 
of  a  Government  which  fills  their  country  with  hostile 
garrisons,  and  sustains  a  detested  dynasty  on  the  throne, 
with  an  acrimony  and  indignation  of  which  that  Government 
alone  is  the  proper  object.  This  feeling  is  honourable  to  the 
French,  and  encouraging  to  all  those  of  every  nation  in 
Europe  who  have  a  fellow-feeling  with  the  oppressed,  and 
who  cherish  an  unconquerable  hope  that  the  cause  of  liberty 
must  at  length  prevail. 

Four  days  later  they  reached  Champagnolles, 
a  little  village  situated  in  the  depths  of  the 
mountains,  and  the  awful  desolation  of  the 
Rousses  and  Nion  passes  was  presently  exchanged 
for  one  of  the  most  smiling  of  landscapes.  In  the 
Hôtel  Sécheron  at  Geneva,  the  travellers  awoke 
next  morning  to  a  view  of  the  lake  and  the  Alps. 

To  what  a  different  scene  are  we  now  arrived  !  To  the 
warm  sunshine,  and  to  the  humming  of  sun-loving  insects  ! 
From  the  windows  of  our  hotel  we  see  the  lovely  lake,  blue 
as  the  heavens  which  it  reflects,  and  sparkling  with  golden 
beams.  The  opposite  shore  is  sloping  and  covered  with 
vines.  .  .  .  Gentlemen's  seats  are  scattered  over  these  banks, 
behind  which  rise  the  various  ridges  of  black  mountains,  and 
towering  far  above  in  the  midst  of  its  snowy  Alps,  the 
majestic  Mont  Blanc,  highest  and  cjueen  of  all.  Such  is  the 
view  reflected  by  the  lake  ;  it  is  a  bright  summer  scene, 
without  any  of  that  sacred  solitude  and  deep  seclusion  that 
delighted  us  at  Lucerne. — {May  17,  181 6.) 

Their  first  proceeding  at  Geneva  was  to  hire 
a  boat,  and  every  evening  at  about  six  o'clock 
they  sailed  on  the  lake,  sometimes  gliding  over 
its  glassy  surface,  at  others  speeded  along  by  a 
strong  wind.  They  seldom  returned  until  ten 
o'clock,  and  then,  as  they  approached  the  shore 
they  were  "saluted  by  the  delightful  scent  of 
flowers  and  new-mown  grass,  and  the  chirp  of 
the  grasshoppers  and  the  song  of  the  evening 
birds." 

R    2 


244    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

The  first  few  days  at  Geneva  were  passed  thus 
in  a  most  delightful  soHtude  : 

We  do  not  enter  into  society  here,  yet  our  time  passes 
swiftly  and  delightfully.  We  read  Latin  and  Italian  during 
the  heats  of  noon,  and  when  the  sun  declines  we  walk  in  the 
garden  of  the  hotel,  looking  at  the  rabbits,  relieving  fallen 
cockchafers,  and  watching  the  motions  of  a  myriad  of  lizards, 
who  inhabit  a  southern  wall  of  the  garden. 

The  lucky  trio,  "  escaped  from  the  gloom  of 
winter  and  of  London/^  inhale. happiness  at  every 
pore  : 

I  feel  as  happy  as  a  new-fledged  bird  [it  is  Mary  who 
still  writes],  and  hardly  care  to  what  twig  I  fly,  so  that  I 
may  try  my  new-fledged  wings.  A  more  experienced  bird 
may  be  more  difficult  in  its  choice  of  a  bower  ;  but  in  my 
present  temper  of  mind  the  budding  flowers,  the  fresh  grass 
of  spring,  and  the  happy  creatures  about  me,  that  live  and 
enjoy  these  pleasures,  are  quite  enough  to  afford  me  ex- 
quisite delight,  even  though  clouds  should  shut  out  Mont 
Blanc  from  my  sight. 

Ten  days  after  their  arrival,  Lord  Byron,  with 
his  inseparable  companion  Polidori,  came  to  the 
Sécheron  Hotel,  where  he  remained  for  a  ïç.\v  days 
in  the  company  of  his  new  friends.  Soon,  how- 
ever, the  two  parties  separated,  outwardly  at  least, 
Byron  removing  to  the  Villa  Diodati,*  and  the 
Shelleys  settling  towards  the  end  of  May  in  a 
cottage  known  as  Campagne  Chapuis,  or  Cam- 
pagne Mont  Alègre,  turning  its  back  on  Mont 
Blanc,  and  facing  the  sombre  view  of  the  Jura, 
behind  which  they  nightly  watched  the  setting 
of  the  sun.  At  their  feet  lay  the  lake,  and  their 
boat  was  moored  in  a  little  creek.  The  clear 
splendid  weather  of  their  early  stay  broke  up, 
rain  and  storm  detained  our  travellers  within 
doors.     All  seemed  to  them  grand  and  majestic; 

'^  It  was  at  Geneva  that  Milton,  on  his  return  from  Italy 
in  1639,  had  paid  a  visit  to  his  friend  Dr.  John  Diodati, 
a  Geneva  Professor  of  Theology. 


SOJOURN  IN  SWITZERLAND.  245 

amid  the  wild  scenery,  storms  were  more 
terrible  and  grandiose  ;  and  in  the  intervals  of 
fine  weather  the  sun  shone  with  a  brightness 
and  warmth  unknown  in  England.  They  were 
deeply  interested  in  the  phenomena  of  Nature, 
and  watched  them  with  a  patience  worthy  of 
professional  astronomers.  Shelley,  who  is,  be- 
yond all  others,  the  painter  of  storm  and  tem- 
pest, garnered  up  colours  and  pictures  for  future 
description. 

"We  watch  them,"  writes  Mary,  June  ist,  1S16,  "as  they 
approach  from  the  opposite  side  of  the  lake,  observing  the 
Hghtning  play  among  the  clouds  in  various  parts  of  the 
heavens,  and  dart  in  jagged  figures  upon  the  piny  heights  oi 
Jura,  dark  with  the  shadow  of  the  overhanging  cloud,  while 
perhaps  the  sun  is  shining  cheerily  upon  us.  One  night  we 
enjoyed  a  finer  storm  than  I  had  ever  before  beheld.  The 
lake  was  lit  up,  the  pines  on  Jura  made  visible,  and  all 
the  scene  illuminated  for  an  instant,  when  a  pitchy  black- 
ness succeeded,  and  the  thunder  came  in  frightful  bursts 
over  our  heads  amid  the  darkness. 

Compared  with  such  splendid  spectacles  the 
narrow  and  ill-paved  streets,  and  the  meaningless 
and  unbeautiful  buildings  of  Geneva,  offered  few 
attractions  to  the  lovers  of  Nature. 

But  they  gazed  with  interest  on  Rousseau's 
obelisk  standing  in  the  Promenade  of  Plain-Palais, 
where  the  people  took  vengeance,  during  the  Revo- 
lution, on  the  magistrates  of  Geneva  for  having 
banished  the  great  philosopher,  ''  and  where,"  says 
Mary,  "  from  respect  to  the  memory  of  their  pre- 
decessors none  of  the  present  magistrates  ever  walk." 

The  most  striking  characteristic  of  the  people 
of  Geneva,  besides  their  Puritanism,  is  the  equality 
between  the  various  classes  of  citizens,  which  is 
due  to  the  greater  liberty  and  the  higher  culture 
of  the  working  classes  : 

•     "Nevertheless,"  continues  Mary,  "the  peasants  of  Swit- 
zerland may  not  emulate  the   vivacity  and  grace  of   the 


-46    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET 

French.  .  .  .  Nothinjj  is  more  pleasant  than  to  hsten  to 
the  evening  song  of  the  vine-dressers.  They  are  all  women, 
and  most  of  them  have  harmonious  although  masculine 
voices.  The  theme  of  their  ballads  consists  of  shepherds, 
love,  flocks,  and  the  sons  of  kings  who  fall  in  love  with 
beautiful  shepherdesses.  Their  tunes  are  monotonous,  but 
it  is  sweet  to  hear  them  in  the  stillness  of  the  evening,  while 
-we  are  enjoying  the  sight  of  the  setting  sun,  either  from  the 
hill  behind  the  house  or  from  the  lake." 

On  the  23rd  of  June,  Shelley  and  Byron  made 
an  excursion  round  the  lake  together.  We  will 
leave  Shelley  to  tell  the  story  himself  : 

Montalègre,  near  Coligni,  Geneva,  July  12. 

It  is  nearly  a  fortnight  since  I  have  returned  from  Vevey. 
This  journey  has  been  on  every  account  delightful,  but  most 
especially  because  I  then  first  knew  the  divine  beauty  of 
Rousseau's  imagination  as  it  exhibits  itself  in  "Julie."  It  is 
inconceivable  what  an  enchantment  the  scene  itself  lends, 
to  those  delineations  from  which  its  own  most  touching 
charm  arises.  But  I  v.  ill  give  you  an  abstract  of  our  voyage, 
which  lasted  eight  days,  and  if  you  have  a  map  of  Switzerland 
you  can  follow  me. 

We  left  Alontalègre  at  half-past  two  on  the  23rd  of  June. 
The  lake  was  calm,  and  after  three  hours  of  rowing,  we 
arrived  at  Hermance,  a  beautiful  little  village  containing  a 
ruined  tower,  built,  the  villagers  say,  by  Julius  Ceesar.  .  .  . 

Leaving  Hermance,  we  arrived  at  sunset  at  the  village  of 
Nerni.  After  looking  at  our  lodgings,  which  were  gloomy 
and  dirty,  we  walked  out  by  the  side  of  the  lake.  It  was 
beautiful  to  see  the  vast  expanse  of  these  purple  and  misty 
waters,  broken  by  the  craggy  islets  near  to  its  slant  and 
**  beached  margin."  There  were  many  fish  sporting  in  the 
lake,  and  multitudes  were  collected  close  to  the  rocks  to 
catch  the  flies  which  inhabited  them. 

On  returning  to  the  village  we  sat  on  a  wall  beside  the 
lake,  looking  at  some  children  who  were  playing  a  game  like 
ninepins.  The  children  here  appeared  in  an  extraordinary 
way  deformed  and  diseased.  Most  of  them  were  crooked, 
and  with  enlarged  throats  ;  but  one  little  boy  had  such 
exquisite  grace  in  his  mien  and  motions  as  I  never  before 
saw  equalled  in  a  child.  His  countenance  was  beautiful  for 
the  expression  with  which  it  overflowed.  There  was  a 
mixture  of  pride  and  gentleness  in  his  eyes  and  lips— the 
indications  of  sensibility,  which  his  education  will  probably 


SOJOURN  IX  SWITZERLAND.  247 

•pervert  to  misery,  or  seduce  to  crime  ;  but  there  was  more  of 
gentleness  than  of  pride,  and  it  seemed  that  the  pride  was 
tamed  from  its  original  wildness  by  the  habitual  exercise  of 
milder  feelings.  My  companion  gave  him  a  piece  of  money 
which  he  took  without  speaking,  with  a  sweet  smile  of  easy 
thankfulness,  and  then  with  an  unembarrassed  air  turned  to 
his  play.  All  this  might  scarcely  be  ;  but  the  imagination 
surely  could  not  forbear  to  breathe  into  the  most  inanimate 
forms  some  likeness  of  its  own  visions,  on  such  a  serene  and 
glowing  evening,  in  this  remote  and  romantic  village,  beside 
the  calm  lake  that  bore  us  hither. 

On  returning  to  our  inn,  we  found  that  the  servant  had 
arranged  our  rooms,  and  deprived  them  of  the  greater  portion 
of  their  former  disconsolate  appearance.  They  reminded  my 
companion  of  Greece;  it  was  five  years,  he  said,  since  he  had 
slept  in  such  beds.  The  influence  of  the  recollections  excited 
by  this  circumstance  on  our  conversation  gradually  faded, 
and  I  retired  to  rest.  .  .  . 

The  next  morning  we  passed  Yvoire,  a  scattered  village 
with  an  ancient  castle,  whose  houses  are  interspersed  with 
trees,  and  which  stands  at  a  little  distance  from  Neini  on  the 
promontory  which  bounds  a  deep  bay,  some  miles  in  extent. 
So  soon  as  we  arrived  at  this  promontory,  the  lake  began  to 
assume  an  aspect  of  wilder  magnificence.  The  mountains  of 
Savoy,  whose  summits  were  bright  with  snow,  descended  in 
broken  slopes  to  the  lake  ;  on  high,  the  rocks  were  dark  with 
pine  forests,  which  become  deeper  and  more  immense,  until 
the  ice  and  snow  mingle  with  the  points  of  naked  rock  that 
pierce  the  blue  air;  but  below,  groves  of  walnut,  chestnut, 
and  oak,  with  openings  of  lawny  fields,  attested  the  milder 
climate. 

As  soon  as  we  had  passed  the  opposite  promontory,  we 
saw  the  river  Drance,  which  descends  from  between  a  chasm 
in  the  mountains,  and  makes  a  plain  near  the  lake,  inter- 
sected by  its  divided  streams.  Thousands  of  bcsolets,  beauti- 
ful water-birds,  like  sea-gulls,  but  smaller,  with  purple  on 
their  backs,  take  their  station  on  the  shallows,  where  its 
waters  mingle  with  the  lake.  As  we  approached  Evian, 
the  mountains  descended  more  precipitously  to  the  lake, 
and  masses  of  intermingled  wood  and  rock  overhung  its 
shining  spire.  .  .  . 

About  half-an-hour  after  we  arrived  at  Evian,  a  few 
flashes  of  lightning  came  from  a  dark  cloud,  directly  over- 
head, and  continued  after  the  cloud  had  dispersed.  "  Diespiter 
per  pura  tonantes  egit  equos,"  a  phenomenon  which  certainly 
had  no  influence  on  me,  corresponding  with  that  which 
it  produced  on  Horace. 

The   appearance  of  the  inhabitants  of  Evian    is   more 


248    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

wretched,  diseased,  and  poor,  than  I  ever  recollect  to  have 
seen.  The  conti'ast,  indeed,  between  the  subjects  of  the 
King  of  Sardinia,  and  the  citizens  of  the  independent 
republics  of  Switzerland,  affords  a  powerful  illustration  of 
the  blighting  effects  of  despotism,  within  the  space  of  a  {ç.vf 
miles.  They  have  mineral  waters  here,  eaux  savonneuses- 
they  call  them.  In  the  evening  we  had  some  difficulty  about 
our  passports,  but  so  soon  as  the  syndic  heard  my  companion's, 
rank  and  name,  he  apologised  for  the  circumstance.  .  .  . 

We  here  heard  (Meillerie)  that  the  Empress  Maria 
Louisa  had  slept  at  Meillerie  ...  in  remembrance  of  Saint- 
Preux.  How  beautiful  it  is  to  find  that  the  common  senti- 
ments of  human  nature  can  attach  themselves  to  those 
who  are  most  removed  from  its  duties  and  its  enjoyments,, 
when  Genius  pleads  for  their  admission  at  the  gate  of 
Power.  .  .  .  We  dined  there,  and  had  some  honey,  the 
best  I  have  ever  tasted,  the  very  essence  of  the  mountain 
flowers,  and  as  fragrant.  Probably  the  village  derives  its 
name  from  this  production.  Meillerie  is  the  well-known 
scene  of  Saint-Preux's  visionary  exile  ;  but  Meillerie  is  indeed 
enchanted  ground,  were  Rousseau  no  magician.  ... 

The  lake  appeared  somewhat  calmer  as  we  left  Meillerie,. 
sailing  close  to  the  banks,  whose  magnificence  augmented 
with  the  turn  of  every  promontory.  But-  we  congratulated 
ourselves  too  soon.  The  wind  gradually  increased  in  violence 
until  it  blew  tremendously  ;  and  as  it  came  from  the  remotest 
extremity  of  the  lake,  produced  waves  of  a  frightful  height, 
and  covered  the  whole  surface  with  a  chaos  of  foam.  One 
of  our  boatmen,  who  was  a  dreadfully  stupid  fellow,  persisted 
in  holding  the  sail  at  a  time  when  the  boat  was  on  the  point 
of  being  driven  under  water  by  the  hurricane.  On  dis- 
covering his  error,  he  let  it  entirely  go,  and  the  boat  for  a 
moment  refused  to  obey  the  helm  ;  in  addition,  the  rudder 
was  so  broken  as  to  render  the  management  of  it  very 
difficult  ;  one  wave  fell  in,  and  then  another.  My  companion, 
an  excellent  swimmer,  took  off  his  coat.  I  did  the  same, 
and  we  sat  with  our  arms  crossed,  every  instant  expecting  to 
be  swamped.  The  sail  was,  however,  again  held,  the  boat 
obeyed  the  helm  ;  and,  still  in  imminent  peril  from  the 
immensity  of  the  waves,  we  arrived  in  a  few  minutes  at  a. 
sheltered  port  in  the  village  of  St.  Gingoux. 

I  felt  at  this  near  prospect  of  death  a  mixture  of  sensa- 
tions, among  which  terror  entered,  though  but  subordinately.. 
My  feelings  would  have  been  less  painful  had  I  been  alone  ; 
but  I  knew  that  my  companion  would  have  attempted  to 
save  me,  and  I  was  overcome  with  humiliation  when  I 
thought  that  his  life  might  have  been  risked  to  preserve 
mine.     When  we  arrived  at  St.  Gingoux,  the  inhabitants. 


SOyOURX  IN  SWITZERLAND.  249 

who  stood  on  the  shore,  unaccustomed  to  see  a  vessel  as 
frail  as  ours,  and  fearing  to  venture  at  all  on  such  a  sea, 
exchanged  looks  of  wonder  and  congratulation  with  our 
boatmen,  who,  as  well  as  ourselves,  were  well  pleased  to  set 
foot  on  shore. 

St.  Gingoux  is  even  more  beautiful  than  Meillerie.  The 
mountains  are  higher,  and  their  loftiest  points  of  elevation 
descend  more  abruptly  to  the  lalce.  On  high  the  aerial 
summits  still  cherish  great  depths  of  snow  in  their  ravines, 
and  in  the  paths  of  their  unseen  torrents.  One  of  the 
highest  of  these  is  called  Roche  de  St.  Julien,  beneath  whose 
pinnacles  the  forests  become  deeper  and  more  extensive. 
The  chestnut  gives  a  peculiarity  to  the  scene,  which  is  most 
beautiful,  and  will  make  a  picture  in  my  memory,  distinct 
from  all  other  mountain  scenes  which  I  have  ever  before 
visited. 

As  we  arrived  here  early,  we  took  a  iwitiire  to  visit  the 
mouths  of  the  Rhone.  We  went  between  the  mountains 
and  the  lake,  under  groves  of  mighty  chestnut-trees,  beside 
perpetual  streams,  which  are  nourished  by  the  snows  above, 
and  form  stalactites  on  the  rocks  over  which  they  fall.  We 
saw  an  immense  chestnut-tree  which  had  been  overthrown^ 
by  the  hurricane  of  the  morning.  The  place  where  the 
Rhone  joins  the  lake  was  marked  by  a  line  of  tremendous 
breakers  ;  the  river  is  as  rapid  as  when  it  leaves  the  lake, 
but  is  muddy  and  dark.  .  .  .  We  returned  to  St.  Gingoux 
before  sunset,  and  I  passed  the  evening  in  reading  "Julie."' 

As  my  companion  rises  late,  I  had  time  before  breakfast 
on  the  ensuing  morning  to  hunt  the  waterfalls  of  the  river 
that  fall  into  the  lake  at  St.  Gingoux.  The  stream  is  indeed, 
from  the  declivity  over  which  it  falls,  only  a  succession  of 
waterfalls,  which  roar  over  the  rocks  with  a  perpetual  sound, 
and  suspend  their  unceasing  spray  on  the  leaves  and  flowers 
that  overhang  and  adorn  its  savage  banks.  The  path  that 
conducted  along  this  river  sometimes  avoided  the  precipices 
of  its  shores  by  leading  through  meadows,  sometimes 
threaded  the  base  of  the  perpendicular  and  cavcrned  rocks. 
I  gathered  in  these  meadows  a  nosegay  of  such  flowers  as  I 
never  saw  in  England,  and  which  I  thought  more  beautiful 
for  that  rarity. 

On  my  return,  after  breakfast  we  sailed  for  Clarens, 
determining  first  to  see  the  three  mouths  of  the  Rhone,  and 
then  the  Castle  of  Chillon.  The  day  was  fine  and  the  water 
calm.  We  passed  from  the  blue  waters  of  the  lake  over  the 
stream  of  the  Rhone,  which  is  rapid  even  at  a  great  distance 
from  its  confluence  with  the  lake  ;  the  turbid  waters  mixed 
with  those  of  the  lake,  but  mixed  with  them  unwillingly.  (See 
"Nouvelle  Héloïse,'' Letter  17,  part  4.)     I  read  "Julie"  all 


2 so    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

day  ;  an  overflowing,  as  it  now  seems,  surrounded  by  the 
scenes  which  it  has  so  wonderfully  peopled,  of  sublimest 
genius,and  more  than  human  sensibility.  Meillerie,  the  Castle 
of  Chillon,  Clarens,  the  mountains  of  La  Valais  and  Savoy 
present  themselves  to  the  imagination  as  monuments  of 
things  that  were  once  familiar,  and  of  beings  that  were 
once  dear  to  it.  They  were  created,  indeed,  by  one  mind, 
but  a  mind  so  powerfully  bright  as  to  cast  a  shade  of  false- 
hood on  the  records  that  are  called  reality. 

We  passed  on  to  the  Castle  of  Chillon,*  and  visited  its 
dungeons  and  towers.  These  prisons  are  excavated  below 
the  lake  ;  the  principal  dungeon  is  supported  by  seven 
columns,  whose  branching  capitals  support  the  roof.  Close 
to  the  very  walls  the  lake  is  800  feet  deep  ;  iron  rings  are 
fastened  to  these  columns,  and  on  them  were  engraven  a 
multitude  of  names,  partly  those  of  visitors,  and  partly  doubt- 
less those  of  the  prisoners,  of  whom  now  no  memory  remains, 
and  who  thus  beguiled  a  solitude  which  they  have  long 
ceased  to  feel.  One  date  was  as  ancient  as  1670.  At  the 
commencement  of  the  Reformation,  and,  indeed,  long  after 
that  period,  this  dungeon  was  the  receptacle  of  those  who 
shook  or  who  denied  the  system  of  idolatry  from  the  effects 
of  which  mankind  is  even  now  slowly  emerging. 

Close  to  this  long  and  lofty  dungeon  was  a  narrow  cell, 
and  beyond  it  one  larger  and  far  more  lofty  and  dark,  sup- 
ported upon  two  unornamented  arches.  Across  one  of  these 
arches  was  a  beam,  now  black  and  rotten,  on  which  prisoners 
■were  hung  in  secret.  I  never  saw  a  monument  more  teirible 
of  that  cold  and  inhuman  tyranny  which  it  has  been  the 
delight  of  man  to  exercise  over  man.  It  was  indeed  one  of 
those  many  tremendous  fulfilments  which  render  the"per- 
nicies  humani  generis  "  of  the  great  Tacitus  so  solemn  and 
irrefragable  a  prophecy .... 

We  proceeded  with  a  contrary  wind  to  Clarens  against 
a  heavy  swell.  I  never  felt  more  strongly  than  on 
landing  at  Clarens,  that  the  spirit  of  old  times  had 
deserted  its  once  cherished  habitation.  A  thousand 
times,  thought  I,  have  Julia  and  St. -Preux  walked  on 
this  terraced  road,  looking  towards  these  mountains  which 
I  now  behold  ;  nay,  treading  on  the  ground  where  I 
now  tread.  From  the  window  of  our  lodging  our  landlady 
pointed  out  "  le  bosquet  de  Julie."  At  least  the  inhabitants 
of  this  village  are  impressed  with  an  idea  that  the  persons 
of  that  romance  had  actual  existence.  In  the  evening  we 
walked  thither.     It  is  indeed  Julia's  wood.     The  hay  was 

*  Reminiscences  of  the  Castle  of  Chillon  occur  in  many 
places  in  "  The  Revolt  of  Islam." 


soy 0 URN  IN  SWITZERLAND.  251 

making  under  the  trees  ;  the  trees  themselves  were  açjed,  but 
vigorous,  and  interspersed  with  younger  ones,  which  are 
destined  to  be  their  successors,  and  in  future  years  when  we 
are  dead,  to  afford  a  shade  to  future  worshippers  of  Nature, 
who  love  the  memory  of  that  tenderness  and  peace  of  which 
this  was  the  imaginary  abode.  We  walked  forward  among 
the  vineyards,  whose  narrow  terraces  overlook  this 
affecting  scene.  Why  did  the  cold  maxims  of  the  world 
compel  me  at  this  moment  to  repress  the  tears  of  melan- 
choly transport  which  it  would  have  been  so  sweet  to 
indulge  immeasurably,  even  until  the  darkness  of  night  had 
swallowed  up  the  objects  which  excited  them  ? 

I  forgot  to  remark,  what  indeed  my  companion  remarked 
to  me,*  that  our  danger  from  the  storm  took  place  precisely 
in  the  spot  where  Julie  and  her  lover  were  nearly  overset, 
and  where  St.-Preux  was  tempted  to  plunge  with  her  into 
the  lake. 

On  the  following  day  we  went  to  seethe  Castle  of  Clarens, 
a  strong,  square  house,  with  very  few  windows,  surrounded 
by  a  double  terrace  that  overlooks  the  valley,  or  rather  the 
plain  of  Clarens.  The  road  which  conducted  to  it  wound 
up  the  steep  ascent  through  woods  of  walnut  and  chestnut. 
We  gathered  roses  on  the  terrace  in  the  feeling  that  they 
might  be  the  posterity  of  some  planted  by  Julie's  hand.  We 
sent  their  dead  and  withered  leaves  to  the  absent. 

We  went  again  to  the  "  bosquet  de  Julie,"  and  found  that 
the  precise  spot  was  now  utterly  obliterated,  and  a  heap  of 
stones  marked  the  place  where  the  little  chapel  had  once 
stood.  Whilst  we  were  execrating  the  author  of  this  brutal 
folly,  our  guide  informed  us  that  the  land  belonged  to  the 
Convent  of  St.  Bernard,  and  that  this  outrage  had  been 
committed  by  their  orders.  I  knew  before  that  if  avarice 
could  harden  the  hearts  of  men,  a  system  of  prescriptive 
religion  has  an  influence  far  more  inimical  to  natural 
sensibility.  I  know  that  an  isolated  man  is  sometimes 
restrained  by  shame  from  outraging  the  venerable  feelings 
arising  out  o!  the  memory  of  genius,  which  once  made  Nature 
even  lovelier  than  itself;  but  associated  man  holds  it  as  the 
very  sacrament  of  his  union  to  forswear  all  delicacy,  all 
benevolence,  all  remorse  ;  all  that  is  true,  or  tender,  or 
sublime. 

We  sailed  from  Clarens  to  Vevey.  .  .  . 

It  was  at  Vevey  that  Rousseau  conceived  the  design  of 
"Julia."  .  .  . 

*  At  a  later  period  Byron  remarked  to  Medwin  :  "  It 
w^ould  have  been  a  more  classical  end,  to  have  perished 
there,  but  a  less  pleasant  one." 


252     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

The  rain  detained  us  two  days  at  Ouchy.  We,  however, 
visited  Lausanne,  and  saw  Gibbon's  house.  We  were 
shown  the  decayed  summer-house  where  he  finished  his 
History,  and  the  old  acacias  on  the  terrace  from  which  he  saw 
Mont  Blanc,  after  having  written  the  last  sentence.  There 
is  something  grand  and  even  touching  in  the  regret  which  he 
expresses  at  the  completion  of  his  task.  It  was  conceived 
amid  the  ruins  of  the  Capitol.  The  sudden  departure  of  his 
accustomed  and  cherished  toil  must  have  left  him  like  the 
death  of  a  dear  friend,  sad  and  solitary. 

My  companion  gathered  some  acacia  leaves  to  preserve 
in  remembrance  of  him.*  I  refrained  from  doing  so,  fearing 
to  outrage  the  greater  and  more  sacred  name  of  Rousseau, 
the  contemplation  of  whose  imperishable  creations  had  left 
no  vacancy  in  my  heart  for  mortal  things.  Gibbon  had 
a  cold  and  unimpassioned  spirit.  I  never  felt  more  inclina- 
tion to  rail  at  the  prejudices  which  cling  to  such  a  thing, 
than  now  that  Julie  and  Clarens,  Lausanne  and  the  Romaii 
Empire,  compelled  me  to  a  contrast  between  Rousseau  and 
Gibbon. 

This  animated  narrative  of  Shelley's  should 
be  compared  with  Byron's  stanzas  in  the  third 
canto  of  "  Childe  Harold/'  of  which,  as  his 
friend  says,  Shelley  speaks  in  terms  of  rapturous 
praise. 

These  stanzas  begin  with  the  lines  : 

Clarens  !  sweet  Clarens,  birthplace  of  deep  Love  ! 

Thine  air  is  the  young  breath  of  passionate  thought  ;   . 

Thy  trees  take  I'oot  in  Love  ;  the  snows  above 

The  very  glaciers  have  his  colours  caught, 

And  sunset  into  rose-hues  sees  them  wrought 

By  rays  which  sleep  there  lovingly  ;  the  rocks, 

The  permanent  crags,  tell  here  of  Love,  who  sought 

In  them  a  refuge  from  the  worldly  shocks, 

Which  stir  and  sting  the  soul  with  hope  that  woos,  then  mocks. 

These  scenes  profoundly  impressed  Shelley's 
imagination  also,  and  transformed  themselves 
there  into  new  creations,  keeping  only  that 
amount  of  reality  which  creative  genius  retains 
when  idealising  Nature. 

.  *  Byron  wrote  to  Murray  after  the  visit  to  Ouchy  on  the 
27th  June,  1816. 


SOyOURX  IN  SWITZERLAND.  253 

Shelley's  landscapes  resemble  those  of  Leonardo 
da  Vinci,  or  other  old  Italian  masters. 

Anything  we  could  say  of  Shelley's*  enthusiasm 
at  this  epoch  for  Rousseau,  would  pale  beside 
his  enthusiastic  expressions  of  admiration  for 
the  "Nouvelle  Héloïse"  in  the  passage  we  have 
quoted,  but,  although  Shelley  was  powerfully 
attracted  by  Rousseau's  admirable  portrayal  of 
Nature,  and  his  incomparable  interpretation  of 
the  purest  and  sweetest  feelings  of  love,  he  was 
not  blind  to  the  errors  of  the  thinker  and  the 
philosopher;  and  although,  like  him,  Shelley  taught 
men  to  return  to  the  truth  and  simplicity  of 
Nature,  and  was  like  him  the  irreconcilable  foe 
of  all  social  conventions,  he  strenuously  opposed 
Rousseau's  interpretation  of  the  word  "Nature/' 
and  nothing  seemed  to  him  more  false  than  the 
wish    that    mankind    should    revert   to   the   state 

*  Shelley  seems  to  have  taken  great  interest  from  an 
early  age  in  all  that  concerned  Rousseau.  Hogg  quotes  an 
anecdote  of  Jean-Jacques  that  appealed  to  the  poet's  imagina- 
tion, and  will  be  appreciated  by  Rousseau's  admirers.  It  is 
strange  to  find  a  hitherto  unpublished  anecdote  in  Hogg's 
book  : 

"  Our  kind  friend  J.  F.  N.  informed  us  that  some  old 
gentleman  of  his  acquaintance,  whose  name  I  have  forgotten, 
came  over  from  France  in  the  packet  with  Rousseau  and 
David  Hume.  The  Scotch  philosopher  was  sick,  and  kept 
below,  but  the  citizen  of  Geneva  was  quite  well  and  lively, 
and  remained  on  deck.  He  was  sociable,  talkative,  and  in- 
quisitive, and  asked  many  questions.  Observing  this  gentle- 
man writing  upon  a  substance  that  was  new  to  him,  he  begged 
to  know  what  it  might  be.  It  was  ass's  skin,  a  substance 
much  used  formerly  in  pocket-books,  but  now  seldom  to  be 
seen.  The  nature  of  the  tablet  was  explained  to  him  ;  how 
■well  it  received  and  retained  the  marks  of  a  black-lead 
pencil,  and  how  readily  the  characters  were  effaced  when  it 
was  wetted.  Rousseau  was  much  surprised  at  the  novelty, 
upon  which  the  gentleman  presented  him  with  the  pocket- 
book,  and  it  was  accepted  with  great  and  almost  childish 
eagerness.  During  the  remainder  of  the  voyage,  with  the 
infantine  simplicity  of  genius,  the  most  eloquent  of  philo- 
sophers was  constantly  playing  with  his  new  toy  ;    busily 


254    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

of  savages  and  of  brutes.  Uncivilised  man 
seemed  to  him  the  most  pernicious  and  miserable 
of  beings. 

"  Man,"  he  said,  "  was  once  a  wild  beast,  who  has  become, 
through  civilisation,  a  moralist,  a  metaphysician,  an  astro- 
nomer, and  a  poet.  Lucretius  and  Virgil,  in  order  to  prove 
the  progress  of  human  nature,  had  but  to  compare  them- 
selves with  the  cannibals  of  Scythia.  Where  justice  increases, 
so  does  equality  ;  and  there  is  more  justice  now,  because 
civilisation  is  more  widely  distributed." 

He  severely  condemned  the  part  taken  by- 
Rousseau  in  the  eighteenth  century,  as  an  in- 
stigation to  the  Revolution  : 

Rousseau  gave  license  by  his  writings  to  passions  that 
only  incapacitate  and  contract  the  human  heart. 

But   with   this   exception,  his  admiration    for 

Rousseau  grew  with   his   years.  In    his   "Essay 

on  Christianity,"  he  goes  so  far  as  to  compare 
him  to  Christ  : 

He  is  perhaps  the  philosopher  among  the  moderns  who, 
in  the  structure  of  his  feelings  and  understanding,  resembles 
most  nearly  the  mysterious  sage  of  Judea.  It  is  impossible 
to  read  those  passionate  words  in  which  Jesus  Christ  up- 
braids the  pusillanimity  and  sensuality  of  mankind  without 
being  strongly  reminded  of  the  more  connected  and  sys- 
tematic enthusiasm  of  Rousseau. 

writing  upon  the  ass's  skin,  wiping  out  and  writing  again. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  by  no  means  impossible  that  the  fanciful, 
capricious,  suspicious  man  soon  afterwards  might  take 
offence  at  the  gift,  imagine  that  some  treachery  lurked  in  it  ; 
that  there  was  a  snake  in  the  grass  ;  that  the  smooth  tablet 
was  contrived  purposely  to  betray  and  ruin  him,  poisoned  by 
the  deceitful  David,  and  thereupon  it  might  be  committed  to 
the  flames.  A  subtle  poison  infused  by  the  envenomed 
malice  of  the  jealous,  insidious  Hume  into  the  ass's  skin, 
gradually  ascending  up  the  pencil  into  the  fingers,  and  pro- 
ceeding thence  along  the  arm,  and  finally  arriving  at  the 
heart,  and  thereupon  instantaneous  death  ;  the  bare  idea  of 
such  an  incident  was  charming  to  Shelley,  and  every  tablet 
of  ass's  skin  was  a  page  of  romance." 


SOJOURN  IX  SWITZERLAND.  255 

In  this  respect  Shelley  is  the  true  son  of  both  ; 
but  Rousseau  had  so  entirely  captivated  his  heart 
and  his  imagination,  that  in  the  last  and  un- 
completed poem,  in  which  he  endeavoured  to 
sum  up  all  his  metaphysical  and  moral  teaching 
on  life  and  human  destiny,  he  invokes  the  spirit 
of  Rousseau  to  lead  him  through  the  Hell  of 
this  world,  just  as  Dante  took  Virgil,  the  mild 
prophet-poet,  for  his  guide  in  the  infernal  regions. 

One  week  spent  in  intimacy  with  Byron 
sufficed  for  Shelley  to  discover  the  real  Byron 
beneath  the  fantastic  appearances  that  concealed 
him  from  the  vulgar  gaze.  On  July  17th,  in  a 
letter  to  Peacock,  he  pronounces  the  following 
categorical  opinion  : 

Lord  Byron  is  an  exceedingly  interesting  person  ;  and  as 
such,  is  it  not  to  be  regretted  that  he  is  a  slave  to  the  vilest 
and  most  vulgar  prejudices,  and  as  mad  as  the  winds  ? 

His  opinion  of  his  noble  friend  hardly  varied 
after  this.  He  continued  to  admire  his  genius, 
which  he  regarded  as  "capable  of  rendering  him 
the  redeemer  of  his  degraded  country,  if  he 
would  but  direct  it  to  that  end." 

In  society  there  is  no  more  agreeable  or 
unassuming  being;  as  a  companion  he  is 
good-humoured,  candid,  and  witty  ;  but  Byron's 
qualities  are  tarnished  by  pride.  He  compares 
his  extraordinary  faculties  with  the  little  minds 
about  him,  and  conceives  an  intense  conviction 
of  the  nothingness  of  life,  and  is  consumed  by 
impatience  and  self-concentration  that  degenerate 
into  scepticism.  Shelley  could  not  pardon  his 
immoral  life,  and  endeavoured  more  than  once 
to  raise  him  from  the  slough;  their  intimacy  in 
Switzerland  produced  the  happiest  effect  on 
Byron,  whose  mind  was  elevated  and  enlarged 
by  contact  with  that  of  his  friend.  The  reader 
must  be  blind  indeed  who  cannot  see  traces  of 


256    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Shelley's  influence  in  the  third  canto  of  "Childe 
Harold,"  and  the  accompanying-  notes.  Moore* 
mentions  and  deplores  that  influence.      He  says  : 

On  philosophy  and  poetry  the  conversation  of  the  two 
poets  crenerally  turned,  and  as  might  be  expected  from 
Lord  Byron's  facility  in  receiving  new  impressions,  the 
opinions  of  his  companion  were  not  altogether  without  some 
influence  on  his  mind.  Here  and  there  among  those  fine 
bursts  of  passion  and  description  that  abound  in  the  third 
canto  of  "  Childe  Harold,"  may  be  discovered  traces  of  that 
mysticism  of  meaning,  that  sublimity  losing  itself  in  its  own 
vagueness,  which  so  much  characterised  the  writings  of  his 
extraordinary  friend,  and  in  one  of  the  notes  we  find  Shelley's 
favourite  Pantheism  of  Love  thus  glanced  at.t 

It  is  probable  that  Byron  read  some  portions 
of  the  third  canto  to  his  friends,  during-  the 
evenings  at  Diodati,J  although  they  were  mostly 
spent  in  animated  conversation  between  Byron 
and  Shelley,  to  which  Mary  listened  with  pas- 
sionate attention  ;  Byron's  voice  touched  her  to 
the  heart. 

"  I  do  not  think,"  she  writes  in  her  journal,  "  that  any 
person's  voice  has  t'ne  same  power  of  awakening  melancholy  in 


*  Moore's  "  Life  of  Byron,"  Vol.  IIL,  p.  65. 

t  See  note  beginning  :  "  But  this  is  not  all  ;  the  feeling 
with  which  all  around  Clarens,"  etc. 

X  On  May  2Sth  of  the  following  year,  Mary  writes  in 
her  journal  :  "  Do  you  not  remember,  Shelley,  when  you  first 
read  it  to  me?  One  evening  after  returning  from  Diodati. 
It  was  in  our  little  room  at  Chapuis.  The  lake  was  before 
us,  and  the  mighty  Jura.  That  time  is  past,  andf  this  will  also 
pass,  when  I  may  weep  to  read  these  words,  and  again 
moralise  on  the  flight  of  time.  ...  I  think  of  our  excursions 
•on  the  lake.  How  we  saw  him  when  he  came  down  to  us, 
or  welcomed  our  arrival  with  a  good-humoured  smile  !  How 
vividly  does  each  verse  of  his  poem  recall  some  scene  of  this 
kind  to  my  memory  !  This  time  will  soon  also  be  a  recol- 
lection. We  may  see  him  again,  and  again  enjoy  his  society  ; 
but  the  time  will  also  arrive  when  that  which  is  now  an 
anticipation  will  be  only  in  the  memory.  Death  will  at 
length  come,  and  in  the  last  moment  all  will  be  a  dream." 


SOJOURN  IN  SWITZERLAND.  257 

me  as  Albè's.  I  have  been  accustomed,  when  hearing  it,  to 
listen  and  speak  little  ;  another's  voice,  not  mine,  ever  re- 
plied— a  voice  whose  strings  are  broken.  When  Albè  ceases 
to  speak,  I  expect  to  hear  that  other  voice,  and  when  I  hear 
another  instead,  it  jars  strangely  with  every  association  .  .  . 
and  thus  .  .  .  when  Albè  speaks,  and  Shelley  does  not 
answer,  it  is  as  thunder  without  rain — the  form  of  the  sun 
without  heat  or  light." 

One  evening  (it  was  June  iSth),  after  a  conver- 
sation on  apparitions  and  ghosts,  Eyron  recited 
some  lines  from  Coleridge's  "  Christabel/'  which 
had  just  been  published  : 

She  unbound 
The  cincture  from  beneath  her  breast  : 
Her  silken  robe,  and  inner  vest, 
Dropt  to  her  feet,  and  full  in  view, 
Behold  !  her  bosom  and  half  her  side — 
Hideous,  deformed,  and  pale  of  hue, 
A  sight  to  dream  of,  not  to  tell  ! 
And  she  is  to  sleep  by  Christabel. 

Seized  with  horror,  Shelley  uttered  a  piercing 
cry;  he  suddenly  thought  of  a  woman  he  had 
heard  of,  who  had  eyes  instead  of  nipples.  When 
he  had  recovered  and  calm  was  restored,  Byroa 
proposed  that  each  one  should  write  a  ghost 
story.  Shelley  began  one,  which,  as  usual,  he 
soon  abandoned.  Byron  began  his  celebrated 
tale  of  the  "Vampire,''  which  Polidori  finished 
and  published  three  years  later,  while  Mary 
wrote  her  "Frankenstein;  or,  the  Modern  Pro- 
metheus." 

A  few  days  afterwards  Shelley  made  another 
Alpine  excursion,  but  this  time  he  was  accom- 
panied by  Mary  and  Claire.  They  left  Geneva 
on  July  20th,  and  passing  through  Bonneville, 
Cluses,  Sallanches,  and  Servoz,  they  reached  the 
valley  of  Chamouni  ;  Shelley  was  much  impressed 
with  a  waterfall  near  Maglans,  at  least  twelve 
hundred  feet  high,  dashing  from  "  the  overhanging 

s 


258    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

brow  of  a  black  precipice,  imitating  a  veil  of  the 
most  exquisite  woof."  At  Servoz,  Mont  Blanc 
was  before  them. 

"  Mont  Blanc  was  before  us,"  writes  Shelley,  "but  it  was 
covered  with  cloud  ;  its  base,  furrowed  with  dreadful  gaps, 
was  seen  above.  Pinnacles  of  snow  intolerably  bright,  part 
of  the  chain  connected  with  Mont  Blanc,  shone  through  the 
clouds  at  intervals  on  high.  I  never  knew — I  never  imagined 
what  mountains  were  before.  The  immensity  of  these  aerial 
summits  excited,  when  they  suddenly  burst  upon  the  sight, 
a  sentiment  of  ecstatic  wonder  not  unallied  to  madness. 
And,  remember,  this  was  all  one  scene  ;  it  all  pressed'  home 
to  our  regard  and  imagination.  Though  it  embraced  a  vast 
extent  of  space,  the  snowy  pyramids  which  shot  into  the 
bright  blue  sky  seemed  to  overhang  our  path  ;  the  ravine, 
clothed  with  gigantic  pines,  and  black  with  its  depth  below, 
so  deep  that  the  very  roaring  of  the  untameable  Arve,  which 
rolled  through  it,  could  not  be  heard  above — all  was  as 
much  our  own  as  if  we  had  been  the  creators  of  such  im- 
pressions in  the  minds  of  others  as  now  occupied  our  own. 
Nature  was  the  poet  whose  harmony  held  our  spirits  more 
breathless  than  that  of  the  divinest." 

The  sight  of  the  Montanvert  and  Les  Bossons 
glaciers  caused  him  unspeakable  rapture  ;  the 
dazzling  white  of  precipice  and  pinnacles — the 
latter  resembling  so  many  glass  needles  beneath 
a  net  of  frosted  silver  ;  the  masses  of  ice  slipping 
down  and  breaking  into  powder  as  they  struck 
the  rocks  beneath,  the  slow  but  incessant  move- 
ment of  the  glaciers  encroaching  in  their  irresis- 
tible march  on  the  surrounding  pasture  lands 
and  forests,  accomplishing  in  the  course  of 
centuries  the  destruction  that  would  be  completed 
in  one  hour  by  a  torrent  of  lava,  and  bearing 
with  them  huge  rocks  and  piled-up  heaps  of 
sand  and  stones  from  their  mountain  sources;' 
all  these  wondrous  sights  moved  him  to  admira- 
tion and  to  philosophical  reflection  on  the  destiny 
of  our  globe  ;  on  the  sublime  but  sombre  theory 
of  Bufifon,  that  the  earth,  at  a  certain  period, 
will   become   a   frozen    mass,    by   reason   of   the 


SOJOURN  IN  SWITZERLAND.  239 

spread  of  the  ice  from  the  Polar  regions  and 
higher  points  of  the  earth's  surface. 

"  Do  you  who  assert  the  supremacy  of  Ahriman,"  he 
■wrote,  in  a  moment  of  poetical  exaltation,  "imagine  him 
throned  among  these  desolating  snows,  among  these  palaces 
of  death  and  frost,  so  sculptured  in  this  their  terrible 
magnificence  by  the  adamantine  hand  of  necessity,  and  that 
he  casts  around  him,  as  the  first  essays  of  his  final  usurpa- 
tions, avalanches,  torrents,  rocks,  and  thunders,  and,  above 
all,  these  deadly  glaciers,  at  once  the  proof  and  symbols  of 
his  reign  ; — add  to  this  the  degradation  of  the  human  species, 
who  in  these  regions  are  halt-deformed  or  idiotic,  and  most 
of  whom  are  deprived  of  anything  that  can  excite  admiration. 
This  is  part  of  the  subject  more  mournful  and  less  sublime, 
but  sucli  as  neither  the  poet  nor  the  philosopher  should 
disdain  to  regard." 

He  afterwards  compares  Mont  Blanc  to  the 
god  of  the  Stoics,  a  vast  animal  whose  frozen 
blood    for  ever  circulated  within  his  stony  veins. 

It  was  at  the  foot  of  the  giant  mountain 
that  Shelley  composed  his  poem  of  "  Mont  Blanc," 
"under  the  immediate  impression,"  he  says  him- 
self, "of  the  deep  and  powerful  feelings  excited 
by  the  objects  which  it  attempts  to  describe  ; 
and  as  an  undisciplined  overflowing  of  the  soul, 
rests  its  claim  to  approbation  on  an  attempt  to 
imitate  the  untameable  wildness  and  inaccessible 
solemnity  from  which  those  feelings  sprang." 

In  this  admirable  poem,  wherein  Shelley  truly 
tries  to  vie  with  the  horror  and  beauty  of  Nature, 
we  find  his  ideal  Ahriman,  transformed  into  the 
personification  of  the  "  old  Earthquake  demon," 
teaching 

.  .  .  her  young 
Ruin.     Were  these  their  toys  ?  .  .  . 

He  interrogates  the  wilderness — the  splendid  and 
funereal  chaos  ;  to  others  they  reply  with  Doubt  and 
Death;  to  Shelley  the  mysterious  tongue  teaches  a 

.  .  .  faith  so  mild, 
So  solemn,  so  serene,  that  man  may  be 
But  for  such  faith  with  Nature  reconciled  ; 


26o    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

and  by  that  reconciliation,  that  union  of  the 
spirit  of  man  with  the  great  spirit  of  Nature^ 
he  finds  a  means  of  raising  himself  above  all 
mortal  passions,  and  all  the  sorrows  of  humanity. 

Thou  hast  a  voice,  great  Mountain,  to  repeal 
Large  codes  of  fraud  and  woe. 

Shelley  gazes  on  Mont  Blanc  piercing  the 
infinite  sky,  still,  snowy,  and  serene,  towering 
far  above  the  unearthly  shapes,  scarred,  ghastly, 
and  riven,  that  are  piled  around  ;  the  image  of 
Nature's  spirit,  of  the  secret  strength  of  things 
which  govern  thought,  without  which  Mont  Blanc 
itself,  and  earth,  and  stars,  and  sea  would  be  but 
silence,  solitude,  and  vacancy.* 

It  is  clear,  from  the  thought  expressed  at 
the  close  of  the  poem — a  thought  which  is  fre- 
quently repeated  in  Shelley's  works — that  Pan- 
theism with  him  was  pure  idealism.  And  it 
becomes  still  more  incontrovertible  on  perusal  of 
his  *'  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty,"  which  was 
also  written  while  in  Switzerland,  and  for  progress 
of  thought  and  beauty  of  form  is  one  of  the 
culminating  points  in  Shelley's  poetry  ;  it  is 
an  invocation  of  his  real  Muse — that  "  unseen 
Power,"  that  "  Spirit  of  Beauty  "  called  "  Demon, 
Ghost,  or  Heaven,"  whose  "light  alone"  "gives 
grace  and  truth  to  life's  unquiet  dream." 

All  Shelley  is  in  that  exquisite  Hymn. 

Another  remarkable  personage,  much  esteemed 
by  our  poet,  was  at  this  epoch  introduced  to 
Shelley  :  Matthew  Gregory  Lewis,  author  of  "  The 

*  On   leaving   Montanvert,    Shelley   had   written  in  the. 
Travellers'  Album  the  two  beautiful  lines— 

"  God  !  let  the  torrents,  like  a  shout  of  nations, 
Answer,  and  let  the  ice-plains  echo  God  !  " 

In  another  inn  Album,  in  the  same  handwriting,  was  written — 

Ei/nt  <^iXâj/S/)cù7ros,  drjfioxpârtxoi  t  adeos  re. 

Lord  Byron  is  said  to  have  effaced  the  latter  inscription. 


SOJOURN  IN  SWITZERLAND.  261 

• 

Monk."  It  was  now  that  Lewis  added  a  codicil 
to  his  will,  witnessed  by  the  three  friends  (Byron, 
Shelley,  and  Polidori),  requiring  the  heir  of  his 
Jamaica  estates  to  visit  the  property  every  three 
years  in  order  to  maintain  the  privileges  and 
rights  of  the  slaves  who  should  belong  to  the 
then  proprietor.* 

Yet  amid  all  the  enjoyment  of  travel  and 
the  pecuniary  anxieties  it  entails,  Shelley  looked 
wistfully  towards  England,  where  he  had  passed 
many  happy  moments,  and  longed  to  return 
thither  as  soon  as  possible.  On  May  15th,  18 16, 
he  wrote  to  Peacock  : 

You  live  by  the  shores  of  a  tranquil  stream,  among  low 
and  woody  hills.  You  live  in  a  free  country,  where  you  may 
act  without  restraint,  and  possess  that  which  you  possess  in 
security  ;  and  so  long  as  the  name  of  country  and  the  selfish 
conceptions  it  includes  shall  subsist,  England,  I  am  persuaded, 
■is  the  most  free  and  the  most  refined.  .  .  . 

So  long  as  man  is  such  as  he  now  is,  the  experience  of 
which  I  speak  will  never  teach  him  to  despise  the  country  of 
his  birth  ;  far  otherwise,  like  Wordsworth,  he  will  never  know 
what  love  subsists  between  that  and  him  until  absence  shall 
•liave  made  its  beauty  more  heartfelt  ;  our  poets  and  our 
philosophers,  our  mountains  and  our  lakes,  the  rural  lanes 
and  fields  which  are  so  especially  our  own,  are  ties  which, 
■until  I  become  utterly  senseless,  can  never  be  broken  asunder. 

These,  and  the  memory  of  them,  if  I  never  should  return, 
these  and  the  affections  of  the  mind,  with  which  having  been 
once  united,  are  inseparable  {sic)^  will  make  the  name  of 
England  dear  to  me  for  ever,  even  if  I  should  permanently 
return  to  it  no  more.  .  .  .  My  present  intention  is  to  return 
to  England,  and  to  make  that  most  excellent  of  nations  my 
perpetual  resting-place. 

Yet  before  returning  to  England  for  ever,  he 
wished  to  see  more  of  the  world. 

"  If  possible,"  he  wrote  on  July  17th,"  we  think  of  descend- 
ing the  Danube  in  a  boat,  of  visiting  Constantinople  and 

*  Forgues'  "Originaux  et  beaux  Esprits  de  l'Angleterre:" 
M.  G.  Lewis.  Lewis  had  just  returned  from  Jamaica,  where 
he  had  been  securing  the  welfare  of  the  numerous  negroes 

■on  his  plantations. 


%Ç>2    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

Athens,  then  Rome  and  the  Tuscan  cities,  and  returning  by  the 
South  of  France,  always  following  great  rivers — the  Danube, 
the  Po,  the  Rhone,  and  the  Garonne.  Rivers  are  not  like  roads, 
the  work  of  the  hands  of  man  ;  they  imitate  mind,  which 
wanders  at  will  over  pathless  deserts,  and  flows  through 
Nature's  loveliest  recesses,  which  are  inaccessible  to  anything- 
besides.  .  .  .  This  Eastern  scheme  is  one  which  has  just 
seized  on  our  imaginations.  I  fear  that  the  detail  of  execu- 
tion will  destroy  it,  as  all  other  wild  and  beautiful  visions.  .  .  . 
Tell  me,  in  return,  all  English  news.  What  has  become  of 
my  poem  ["  Alastor"]  ?  I  hope  it  has  already  sheltered  itself  in 
the  bosom  of  its  mother,  Oblivion,  from  whose  embraces  no 
one  could  have  been  so  barbarous  as  to  tear  it  except  me. 

"  Tell  me  of  the  political  state  of  England  ;  its  literature, 
of  which  when  I  speak,  Coleridge  is  in  my  thoughts  ;  your- 
self, lastly  your  own  employments,  your  historical  labours.  .  .  . 

"  You  must  shelter  my  roofless  Penates,  dedicate  some  new 
temple  to  them,  and  perform  the  functions  of  a  priest  in  my 
absence.  They  are  innocent  deities,  and  their  worship 
neither  sanguinary  nor  absurd. 

"  Leave  Mammon  and  Jehovah  to  those  who  delight  in 
wickedness  and  slavery  ;  their  altars  are  stained  with  blood, 
or  polluted  with  gold,  the  price  of  blood.  But  the  shrines 
of  the  Penates  are  good  wood  fires,  or  window-fram.es  inter- 
twined with  creeping  plants  ;  their  hymns  are  the  purring  of 
kittens,  the  hissing  of  kettles,  the  long  talks  over  the  past 
and  the  dead,  the  laugh  of  children,  the  warm  wind  of 
summer  filling  the  quiet  house,  and  the  pelting  storm  of 
winter  struggling  in  vain  for  entrance.  .  .  . 

"  I  trust  entirely  to  your  discretion  on  the  subject  of  a 
house.  Certainly  the  Forest  engages  my  preference,  because 
of  the  sylvan  nature  of  the  place  and  the  beasts  with  which 
it  is  filled.  But  I  am  not  insensible  to  the  beauties  of  the 
Thames.  .  .  . 

"  Recollect,  however,  we  are  now  choosing  a  fixed,  settled, 
eternal  home,  and  as  such  its  internal  qualiiies  will  affect  us 
more  constantly  than  those  which  consist  in  the  surrounding 
scenery,  which,  whatever  it  may  be  at  first,  will  shortly  be  no 
more  than  the  colours  with  which  our  own  habits  shall 
invest  it." 

The  fixed,  settled,  and  lasting  home  for  which 
Shelley  was  seeking,  was  destined  to  endure 
barely  two  years. 


CHAPTER    XÎV. 

SHELLEY  AT  BATH— SUICIDE  OF  HARRIET  AND 
MARRIAGE  OF  SHELLEY — THE  HERMIT  OF 
MARLOW — "LAON  AND  CYTHNA  " — "PRINCE 
ATHANASIUS  '' — ADDRESS  TO  THE  ENGLISH 
PEOPLE — 1816-1818. 

On  returning  to  London,  September  7th,  1816, 
Shelley  hastened  to  join  his  friend  Peacock,  and 
stayed  a  fortnight  with  him  at  Marlow,  where  he 
determined  to  settle,  and  while  the  temple  of 
his  Penates  was  being  prepared,  he  removed  for  a 
time  to  Rath. 

On  October  9th,  Mary  received  an  alarming 
letter  ;  and  Shelley  immediately  set  off  for  Bristol 
and  Swansea.  But  the  day  preceding  that  of  his 
arrival,  October  loth,  poor  Fanny  Imlay  had 
committed  suicide  in  the  bedroom  of  an  inn  ;  a 
bottle  of  laudanum  lay  upon  the  table  by  her  side 
with  a  note  which  ran  thus  :  "  I  have  long  deter- 
mined that  the  best  thing  I  could  do  was  to  put 
an  end  to  the  existence  of  a  being  whose  birth 
was  unfortunate,  and  whose  life  has  only  been 
a  series  of  pain  to  those  persons  who  have  hurt 
their  health  in  endeavouring  to  promote  her 
welfare.  Perhaps  to  hear  of  my  death  will  give 
you  pain  ;   but  you  will  soon  have  the  blessing  of 


204.    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 
forgetting    that    such    a    creature   ever    existed 

as . .  r 

As  Shelley  read  this  touching  farewell,  he 
recalled  his  last  hurried  interview  with  Fanny 
in  London,  and  penned  the  mournful  stanza  : 

Her  voice  did  quiver  as  we  parted  ; 

Yet  knew  I  not  that  heart  was  broken 
From  whence  it  came,  and  I  departed 
Heeding  not  the  words  then  spoken. 
Misery,  O  Misery  ! 
This  world  is  all  too  wide  for  thee  !  * 

This  tragic  event  was  soon  succeeded  by  another 
still  more  painful  to  Shelley.  On  December  14th 
a  letter  from  Hookham  acquainted  him  with  the 
death  of  Harriet  Westbrook,  whose  body  had  been 
found  in  the  Serpentine.  She  was  twenty-two 
years  of  age.  Her  life,  from  the  date  of  her 
separation  from  Shelley,  is  somewhat  obscure  to 
us.  Thornton  Hunt  asserts  that  having  been 
deserted  by  her  lover  (a  captain  in  the  army 
according  to  Trelawney),  she  was  thrown  on  the 
streets,  repudiated  by  her  father  and  sister,  driven 
from  their  house,  and  finally,  feeling  deserted  by 
the  whole  universe,  her  thoughts  reverted  to  the 
idea  of  voluntary  death,  which  from  childhood 
had  been  cherished  by  her. 

Shelley,  who  had  always  been  mindful  of  her 
since  their  separation,  and  had  provided  for  her 
maintenance,  had  for  a  few  weeks  lost  sight  of  her, 
and  was  vainly  inquiring  for  her  address. 

On  receiving  the  fatal  news  Shelley  hastened  to 
London  to  claim   his  children,  and   nothing  can 

*  Mr.  Dowden  proves  satisfactorily  that  Fanny's  death 
cannot  be  attributed  to  an  unfortunate  attachment  for  Shelley, 
as  Claire  asberts.  Her  letters,  collected  by  Mr.  Dowden, 
sufficiently  explain  her  suicide  as  being  merely  the  natural 
result  of  the  excessive  melancholy  inherent  in  her  disposi- 
tion and  increased  by  the  nature  of  her  surroundings  at 
Skinner  Street. 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  265 

give  a  clearer   idea  of  his  state   of  mind   than  the 
letter  he  wrote  on  the  following  day  to  Mary  : 

1  have  spent  a  day,  my  beloved,  of  somewhat  agonising 
sensations,  such  as  the  contemplation  of  vice,  and  folly,  and 
hard-heartedness  exceeding  all  conception  must  produce. 
Leigh  Hunt  has  been  with  me  all  day,  and  his  delicate  and 
tender  attentions  to  me,  his  kind  speeches  of  you,  have  sus- 
tained me  against  the  weight  of  the  horror  of  this  event. 

The  children  I  have  not  got.  I  have  seen  Longdiil,  who 
Tecommends  proceeding  with  the  utmost  caution  and  reso- 
luteness ;  he  seems  interested.  I  told  him  I  was  under  con- 
tract of  marriage  to  you,  and  he  said  that  in  such  an  event  all 
pretence  to  detain  the  children  would  cease.  Hunt  said 
very  delicately  that  this  would  be  soothing  intelUgence  to 
you.  Yes,  my  only  hope,  my  darling  love,  this  will  be  one 
among  the  innumerable  benefits  which  you  will  have 
bestowed  upon  me,  and  which  will  still  be  inferior  in  value 
to  the  greatest  of  benefits — yourself.  It  is  through  you  that 
I  can  entertain  without  despair  the  recollection  of  the 
horrors  of  unutterable  villainy  that  led  to  this  dark,  dreadful 
death.  .  .  .  Everything  tends  to  prove,  however,  that  beyond 
the  shock  of  so  hideous  a  catastrophe  having  fallen  on  a 
human  being  once  so  nearly  connected  with  me,  there  would, 
in  any  case,  be  little  to  regret.  Hookham,  Longdiil,  every 
one  does  me  full  justice  ;  bears  testimony  to  the  upright 
spirit  and  liberality  of  my  conduct  to  her.  There  is  but  one 
voice  in  condemnation  of  the  detestable  Westbrooks.  If 
they  should  dare  to  bring  it  be'ore  Chancery,  a  scene  of 
such  fearful  horror  would  be  unfolded  as  would  cover  them 
■with  scorn  and  shame.  .  .  .  Do  you,  dearest  and  best,  seek 
happiness — where  it  ought  to  reside — in  your  own  pure  and 
perfect  bosom  ;  in  the  thoughts  of  how  dear  and  how  good 
you  are  to  me  ;  how  wise  and  how  extensively  beneficial  you 
are  perhaps  now  destined  to  become.  Remember  my  poor 
babes,  lanthc  and  Charles.  How  tender  and  dear  a 
mother  they  will  find  in  you — darling  William,  too  !  My 
eyes  overflow  with  tears.     To-morrow  1  will  write  again. 

Nothing  can  be  more  tender  and  loving  than 
Mary's  reply  to  this  letter  ;  her  hand  trembles  as 
5he  thinks  of  poor  Fanny's  sad  fate  : 

Poor  dear  Fanny  !  If  she  had  lived  until  this  moment 
she  would  have  been  saved,  for  my  house  would  then  have 
been  a  proper  asylum  for  her.  .  .  .  How  very  happy 
shall   I    be   to  possess   those   darling   treasures   of   yours  ! 


266    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

[lanthe  and  Charles]  .  .  .  There  will  be  a  sweet  brother  and 
sister  for  my  William,  who  will  lose  his  pre-eminence  as 
eldest.  .  .  . 

Harriet's  suicide,  following  on  that  of  Fanny, 
was  a  frightful  blow  to  Shelley;  his  character  was 
altered  by  it,  and  the  remembrance  haunted  him 
to  his  last  hour.     Thornton  Hunt  writes  : 

I  am  well  aware  that  he  had  suffered  severely,  and  that 
he  continued  to  be  haunted  by  certain  recollections,  partly 
real  and  partly  imaginative,  which  pursued  him  like  an 
Orestes.  If  exteriorly  he  appeared  to  bear  this  blow  philo- 
sophically, the  reason  is  he  was  as  undemonstrative  as  he 
was  profound,  and  at  all  times  of  his  life  was  remarkably- 
free,  as  De  Ouincey  observes,  from  "sickly  sentimentalism." 

From  a  feeling  of  delicacy  and  a  regard  for 
appearances,  Shelley  hesitated  as  to  an  immediate 
marriage  with  Mary.  But  on  the  advice  of 
Peacock  and  that  of  Sir  Lumley  Skeffington, 
author  of  a  play  called  "  The  Word  of  Honour/' 
and  considered  to  be  an  infallible  judge  in  such 
delicate  matters,  the  formal  ceremony  was  gone 
through  without  delay. 

He  needed  no  hints  from  Godwin  ;  still  less 
was  it,  as  Mr.  Jeafifreson  implies,  a  wish  to  annoy 
his  father.  On  December  30th,  18 16,  the  marriage 
was  celebrated  at  St.  Mildred's  in  presence  of 
Godwin  and  his  wife. 

During  this  time  of  trial  Shelley  found  some 
consolation  in  a  new  friendship  which  proved 
enduring.  Until  the  autumn  of  1816,  he  had  no 
close  relations  with  Leigh  Hunt,  in  whom,  how- 
ever, he  had  been  deeply  interested  as  a  victim  of 
intolerance  and  tyranny.* 

*  Shelley  had  expressed  his  sympathy  at   the  time   of 
Hunt's  imprisonment,  and  it  was  probably  on  the  occasion 
of  his  liberation  that  he  wrote  the  following  sonnet  : 
For  me,  my  friend,  if  not  that  tears  did  tremble 

In  my  faint  eyes,  or  that  my  heart  beat  fast 
With  feelings  that  make  rapture  pain  resemble. 
Yet  from  thy  voice  that  falsehood  starts  aghast. 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH,  267 

Hunt  had  at  first  contemned  the  productions 
of  the  young  poet.  It  was  not  until  he  had 
read  "Alastor''  and  the  "Hymn  to  Intellectual 
Beauty/^  that  he  made  reparation  in  the  columns 
of  the  Examiner  by  an  article  in  which  he 
mentions  Shelley  as  "  one  of  the  young  poets 
who  promises  to  shed  lustre  on  the  new  school." 
"  If  the  rest  answer/'  he  added,  "  to  what  we  have 
seen,  we  shall  have  no  hesitation  in  announcing 
him  for  a  very  striking  and  original  thinker.'" 
The  ice  was  now  broken. 

Early  in  November  Shelley  was  at  Marlow, 
and  took  the  opportunity  of  visiting  his  new 
friend  at  his  pretty  Hampstead  home,  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Marlow.  In  January,  18 17,  the 
Chancery  suit  concerning  his  children  by  Harriet 
brought  Shelley  up  to  London.  The  Westbrooks 
denounced  him  as  author  of  "  Queen  Mab/' 
Atheist,  and  Republican,  and  he  must  prepare 
his  defence.  Shelley  might  well  fear  that  the 
reactionary  and  intolerant  spirit  of  the  times, 
which  had  driven  Cobbett  to  America,  might 
visit  on  him  the  severe  penalties  of  the  law 
of  libel,  and  that,  like  Eaton,  he  might  be 
punished  with  imprisonment  and  the  stocks. 
Mary,  ever  anxious  and  loving,  soon  joined  him 
in  London, 

His  literary  connection  with  Hunt  and  his 
circle,  of  which  the  Examiner  was  the  centre 
and  mainspring,  was  fortunate  for  Shelley,  in 
diverting  his  mind  from  his  fears  and  anxieties; 
and  Mary  became  intimate  with  Hunt's  wife^ 
the  Marianne  whose  name  lives  for  ever  in  the 
poet's  verse. 

I  thank  thee  !     Let  the  tyrant  keep 

His  chains  and  tears— yea,  let  him  weep 

With  rage  to  see  thee  freshly  risen, 

Like  strength  from  shmiber,  from  the  prison 

In  which  he  vainly  hoped  the  soul  to  bind, 

Which  on  the  chains  must  prey  that  fetter  humankind. 


258     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

"That  was  a  memorable  evening"  (February 
5th,  1 8 17),  writes  Mr.  Dowden,  ''when  the  three 
'Young  Poets'  of  his  Examiner  article  of  three 
months  since — Reynolds,  Keats,  and  Shelley — 
supped  together  at  Hampstead  with  their  gene- 
rous critic.  '  Keats,'  we  are  told  by  Leigh  Hunt, 
*  did  not  take  to  Shelley  as  kindly  as  Shelley 
did  to  him.  .  .  .  Keats  being  a  little  too  sensitive 
on  the  score  of  his  origin,  felt  inclined  to  see 
in  every  man  of  birth  a  sort  of  natural  enemy.'" 
At  Hunt's  table  Shelley  also  became  acquainted 
with  Charles  Lamb — but  the  latter,  to  Shelley's 
regret,  drew  away  from  him — and  Hazlitt,  with 
whom  he  discussed  politics  until  three  in  the 
morning.  With  Brougham,  also,  the  great  and 
terrible  editor  of  the  Edinb7ir^h  Revieiv,  the 
advocate  of  the  Examiner  in  Government  prose- 
cutions, and  his  own  adviser  in  the  Chancery 
suit,  Shelley  now  became  acquainted,  and  in 
Horace  Smith  he  found  a  true  and  devoted 
friend,  who,  to  the  ardour  of  a  poet  and  the 
zeal  of  a  political  reformer,  added  the  sound 
judgment  of  a  man  of  business.  Shelley  him- 
self has  sketched  him  for  us.  '*  Is  it  not  odd, 
that  the  only  truly  generous  person  I  ever  knew, 
•who  had  money  to  be  generous  with,  should 
be  a  stockbroker  .-*  And  he  writes  poetry,  too, 
and  pastoral  dramas,  and  yet  knows  how  to 
make  money,  and  does  make  it,  and  is  still 
generous."  And  later,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Gisborne, 
he  says  : 

Wit  and  sense, 
Virtue  and  human  knowledge— all  that  might 
Make  this  dull  world  a  business  of  delight — 
Are  all  combined  in  Horace  Smith. 

In  March,  Shelley  set  up  his  peaceful  Penates 
in  a  spacious  cottage  (Albion  House)  at  Marlow, 
not  far  from  the  Thames.  It  was  surrounded 
by    a    large    garden,    beyond     which    lay    open 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  269 

meadows  leading  towards  undulating  wooded 
slopes.  Eight  dormer  windows  gave  a  Gothic 
appearance  to  the  front  of  the  house.  The 
largest  room,  large  enough  for  a  ball-room,  but 
damp  and  cold,  was  fitted  up  by  Shelley  as  a 
library.  His  writing-table  stood  between  two 
life-sized  casts  of  Apollo  and  Urania.*  The  house- 
hold consisted  of  Shelley,  his  wife,  little  William, 
Claire  and  little  Alba,t  Elise,  a  Swiss  nurse,. 
and  Harry,  the  gardener  and  man-of-all-work. 

The  happiness  of  Shelley  and  Mary  was  now 
complete  ;  Mary  spent  her  time  in  reading, 
studying,  and  writing  "  Frankenstein  ^^  ;  \  Claire 
also  wrote,  but  her  special  delight  was  music  ; 
she  accompanied  herself  on  the  piano,  to  which 
she  sang  m  a  voice  compared  by  her  former 
music-master,  Corri,  to  a  string  of  pearls,  giving 
the  most  exquisite  delight  to  Shelley,  whose  soul 
was  "dissolved"  in  "consuming  ecstasies,"  § 

If  the  hermitage  of  Marlow  were  a  temple  of 
poetry,  it  was  also  one  of  friendship.  Shelley's 
friends  enjoyed  without  scruple  the  generous 
hospitality  he  offered  them.  They  were  Godwin, 
Peacock,  Hogg,  the  Hunts,  and  Horace  Smith. 
But  the  poet  made  no  acquaintance  among  the 
neighbouring  commonplace  gentry,  whom  he  held 
in  horror. 

One  of  his  greatest  amusements  at  Marlow 
was  boating  on  the  river.  His  little  mimic  fleets 
of  paper  boats  no  longer  sufficed  him  ;  he  owned 

*  Mr.  Dowden  says  Venus. 

t  Alba  or  Allegra,  the  child  of  Byron  and  Claire,  was 
born  at  Bath  on  January  12th,  1817.  At  Marlow  she  passed 
for  the  daughter  of  a  friend  in  London,  sent  into  the  country 
for  her  health. 

X  "Frankenstein;  or,  the  Modern  Prometheus,"  181 3 
(3  vols.).  The  most  remarkable  of  Mary's  works  ;  the 
preface  was  written  by  Shelley. 

§  "  To  Constantia  Singing."  A  poem  addressed  to  Claire 
under  that  name. 


270    SHELLEY—THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

a  boat,  made  for  both  oars  and  sail,  which  he 
had  christened  the  Vaga  (to  which  his  friends 
would  playfully  add  the  syllable  "  bond  ").  Leigh 
Hunt  gives  the  following  account  of  the  daily  life 
of  the  Hermit  of  Marlow  : 

He  rose  early  in  the  morning,  walked  and  read  before 
breakfast,  took  that  meal  sparingly,  wrote  and  studied  the 
greater  part  of  the  morning,  walked  and  read  again,  dined 
on  vegetables  (for  he  took  neither  meat  nor  wine),  conversed 
with  his  friends  (to  whom  his  house  was  ever  open),  again 
walked  out,  and  usually  finished  with  reading  to  his  wife  till 
ten  o'clock,  when  he  went  to  bed.  His  book  was  generally 
Plato  or  Homer,  or  one  of  the  Greek  tragedians,  and  the 
Bible,  in  which  he  took  a  great,  though  peculiar,  and  often 
admiring  interest. 

While  in  the  enjoyment  of  these  peaceful  days 
consecrated  to  study  and  friendship,  a  blow  was 
struck  which  was  terrible  to  his  feelings  as  a 
father,  and  decisive  of  the  future  course  of  his 
life. 

"  Jew  "  Westbrook's  petition  to  the  Court  of 
Chancery,  praying  that  all  control  over  the  educa- 
tion of  his  children  should  be  taken  from  Shelley, 
came  before  the  Court  in  March,  1S17,  and  on 
the  27th  of  that  month  the  High  Chancellor, 
Lord  Eldon,  pronounced  judgment  in  favour 
of  the  petitioner.  Harriet's  children  were  placed 
under  the  guardianship  of  their  grandfather,  and 
that  of  Dr.  Hume,  a  clergyman  of  the  Anglican 
Church. 

The  considerations  alleged  by  Mr.  Westbrook 
were  that  Shelley  had  deserted  his  wife,  and  that 
he  was  an  avowed  Atheist,  who  would  educate  his 
children  in  his  own  principles;  "Queen  Mab" 
was  quoted  to  prove  his  opinions  concerning 
God  and  marriage,  as  also  his  Letter  to  Lord 
Ellenborough. 

Notwithstanding  the  skilful  defence  set  up  by 
Shelley-j    Lord    Eldon,   who   had    taken    time   to 


1 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  271 

•consider  his  judgment,  pronounced  against  him. 
Purposely  leaving  aside  the  accusation  of  Atheism, 
he  dwelt  principally  on  the  immorality  of  Shelley's 
opinions  on  marriage,  and  on  his  conduct  as 
influenced  by  these. 


"  There  is  nothing  in  evidence  before  me,"  said  his  Lord- 
ship, "sufficient  to  authorise  me  in  thinking  that  this  gentle- 
man has  changed,  before  he  arrived  at  the  age  of  twenty-five, 
the  principles  he  avowed  at  nineteen.  I  think  there  is  ample 
evidence  in  the  papers,  and  in  his  conduct,  that  no  such 
change  has  taken  place.  .  .  .  This  is  a  case  in  which,  as  the 
matter  appears  to  me,  the  father's  principles  cannot  be  mis- 
understood ;  in  which  his  conduct,  which  I  cannot  but 
consider  as  highly  immoral,  has  been  established  in  proof, 
and  established  as  the  effect  of  those  principles  ;  conduct, 
nevertheless,  which  he  represents  to  himself  and  others 
not  as  conduct  to  be  considered  as  immoral,  but  to  be 
recommended  and  observed  in  practice,  and  as  v/orthy  of 
approbation  .  .  .  conduct  which  the  law  animadverts  upon 
as  inconsistent  with  the  duties  of  such  persons  and  those  of 
the  community." 


Shelley  was  consequently  restrained  "  from 
intermeddling  with  the  children  until  the  further 
order  of  the  Court." 

Although  Shelley  did  not  appeal  from  this 
judgment  to  the  House  of  Lords,  yet  he  did  not 
despair  of  obtaining  justice  and  a  reversal  of  the 
odious  sentence,  in  the  event  of  a  change  in  the 
political  situation.  In  a  letter  to  Peacock,  written 
at  Naples  in  18 19,  he  says:  "We  have  reports 
here  of  a  change  in  the  English  Ministry — to  what 
does  it  amount }  for,  besides  my  national  interest 
in  it,  I  am  on  the  watch  to  vindicate  my  most 
sacred  rights,  invaded  by  the  Chancery  Court." 

Meanwhile,  the  poet  vindicated  the  father,  and 
Lord  Eldon  acquired  in  Shelley's  indignant  verse 
an  immortality  he  would  have  sought  in  vain  from 
his  own  judicial  prose. 

Among  the  poems  of  18 17,  we  may  read  the 


272     SHELLEY—THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET. 

terrible  curse   invoked  by  an  outraged   father  on 
him  whom  he  calls  the 

.  .  .  darkest  crest 
Of  tliat  foul,  knotted,  many-headed  worm 
Which  rends  our  mother's  bosom — priestly  pest  ! 

By  those  unpractised  accents  of  young  speech, 
"Which  he  who  is  a  father  thought  to  frame 

To  gentlest  lore  such  as  the  wisest  teach. 

7  hoit  strike  the  lyre  of  mind  !  oh,  grief  and  shame  !..  » 

I  curse  thee    .  .  . 

Nor  does  Shelley  miss  a  later  opportunity  of 
branding  him  who  had  torn  away  his  children  ;  in 
the  "Mask  of  Anarchy"  (1819),  he  depicts  Lord 
Eldon  under  the  name  of  Fraud  : 

Next  came  Fraud,  and  he  had  on, 
Like  Lord  Eldon,  an  ermine  gown. 
His  big  tears,  for  he  wept  well. 
Turned  to  millstones  as  they  fell  ; 
And  the  little  children  who 
Round  his  feet  played  to  and  fro, 
Thinking  every  tear  a  gem. 
Had  their  brains  knocked  out  by  them. 

The  weeping  Eldon  in  "  Œdipus  Tyrannus  ''^ 
will  appear  again  as  "  Dakry,  the  Wizard  Minister 
of  Swellfoot." 

Thus  bereft  of  two  children,  Shelley  turned  an 
anxious  gaze  on  his  little  William,  lest,  in  the 
name  of  religion  and  morality,  a  sacrilegious 
hand  should  claim  that  child  too  from  his 
father's  care.  He  conceived  the  project  of  re- 
moving him  from  his  ungrateful  country,  and 
seeking  beyond  the  sea  the  sunny  shores  of  Italy 
or  Greece. 

His  dream  of  a  lasting  abode  in  free  England 
had  vanished  ;  his  health  was  terribly  affected 
by  the  successive  shocks  he  had  undergone,  and 
required  a  warmer  climate  ;  it  was  his  duty  to  live 
for  those  who  remained  to  him,  those  to  whom  his 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  273 

life  might  be  a  source  of  happiness^  usefulness, 
safety,  and  honour^  while  his  death  would  deprive 
them  of  all  these  things.* 

It  might  be  expected  that  under  repeated 
strokes  of  misfortune,  the  poet  would  bend  and 
sink.  But  on  the  contrary,  he  seemed  to  acquire 
new  strength  and  spirit.  While  anxiously  awaiting 
the  decision  of  the  Court,  he  wrote  his  longest 
poem.  While  the  law  was  branding  him  as 
unfit  "for  the  most  rudimentary  duties  of  social 
life/^  he  was  preparing  to  protest  more  strongly 
than  ever  against  those  principles  in  the  name  of 
which  he  was  condemned  ;  and  he  pursued  with 
confidence  and  enthusiasm  the  moral  and  social 
ideal  which  he  had  proclaimed,  and  for  which 
he  had  already  suffered  martyrdom.  He  com- 
posed "  Laon  and  Cythna.'^ 

"The  poem  was  written,"  says  Mary,  "  in  his  boat  as  it 
floated  under  the  beech-groves  of  Bisham,  or  during  wander- 
ings in  the  neighbouring  country,  which  is  distinguished  for 
pecuhnr  beauty.  The  chalk  hills  break  into  cliffs  that  over- 
hang the  '1  hames,  or  form  valleys  clothed  with  beech  ;  the 
wilder  portion  of  the  country  is  rendered  beautiful  by  e.xu- 
Ijerant  vegetation  ;  and  the  cultivated  part  is  peculiarly 
fertile.  \\  ith  all  this  wealth  of  nature  which,  either  in  the 
form  of  gentlemen's  parks  or  soil  dedicated  to  agriculture, 
flourished  around,  Marlow  was  inhabited  (I  hope  it  is 
altered  now)  by  a  very  poor  population.  The  women  are 
lace-makers,  and  lose  their  health  by  sedentary  labour,  for 
which  they  were  very  ill  paid.  The  poor-laws  ground  to  the 
dust  not  only  the  paupers,  but  those  who  had  risen  just 
above  th;it  state,  and  were  obliged  to  pay  poor-rates.  .  .  . 
iihclley  afforded  what  alleviation  he  could. t     In  the  winter, 

*  Letter  to  Godwin,  Dec.  7,  18 17. 

t  His  sojourn  at  Marlow  was  one  continual  exercise  of 
benevolence  ;  many  long  pages  might  be  filled  with  the 
narration  of  his  charitable  deeds,  as  told  by  his  biographers. 
This  period  of  his  life  resembles  the  lives  of  the  Saints. 
One  of  his  neighbours  and  friends,  Mrs.  Madocks,  who 
acted  as  his  almoner  during  the  absence  of  the  Hermit 
of  Marlow,  gives  the  following  testimony  in  1S59  :   "Every 

T 


274    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

while  bringing  out  his  poem,  he  had  a  severe  attnck  of 
ophthahnia,  caught  while  visiting  the  poor  cottages.  I  men- 
tion these  things — for  this  minute  and  active  sympathy  with 
his  fellow  creatures  gives  a  thousandfold  interest  to  his 
speculations,  and  stamps  with  reality  his  pleadings  for  the 
human  race." 

And,  in  fact,  if  there  is  one  distinctive  mark 
amid  its  exuberance  of  moral,  political,  and  reli- 
gious teaching  in  the  poem,  it  is  the  ardent  love  of 
mankind  burning,  from  beginning  to  end,  with 
irresistible  and  contagious  fire.  We  find  in  it 
precisely  the  same  creed  as  in  "  Queen  Mab  '^  ; 
hatred  of  tyranny  and  custom^  condemnation  of 
selfishness  and  cupidity  that  darken  the  heart  and 
destroy  the  energies  of  man,  intense  longing  to 
rescue  the  human  race  from  the  ignominious 
yoke  of  religion,  and  woman  from  the  degrading 
slavery  that  lowers  and  corrupts  her.  But  these 
doctrines  are  set  forth  with  such  passionate  con- 
viction, with  such  forcible  and  burning  eloquence, 
they  are  so  full  of  sympathy,  love,  and  hope, 
that  we  are  carried  away,  in  spite  of  ourselves, 
by  the  deep  and  rushing  stream  ;  we  forget 
to  admrre  the  eloquent  poetry,  because  we  are 
bewildered  by  the  magical  descriptions,  and  filled 
with  the  strange  charm  of  the  m-arvellous  and 
divine  evocations  of  this  new  Apocalypse.  Shelley 
himself  called  his  poem  a  "  Vision  of  the  Nine- 
teenth  Century."      He   no    longer   gives   us    the 

spot  is  sacred  that  he  visited  ;  he  was  a  gentleman  that 
seldom  took  money  about  with  him,  and  we  received 
numerous  little  billets,  written  sometimes  on  the  leaf  of  a 
book,  to  pay  the  bearer  the  sum  he  specified,  sometimes  as 
much  as  half-a-crown  ;  and  one  day  he  came  home  without 
shoes,  saying  that  he  had  no  paper,  so  he  gave  the  poor  man 
his  shoes.  Like  St.  Francis,  his  charity  was  extended  to 
the  dumb  creation.  He  would  buy  cray-fish  of  the  men  who 
brought  them  through  the  streets,  and  would  order  his 
servant  to  bear  them  back  to  their  lurking-places  in  the 
Thames." 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  275 

melancholy  despair  of  Alastor  who,  in  his  dis- 
illusion, seeks  rest  and  oblivion  in  death  ;  but, 
revived  by  love,  Shelley,  in  the  person  of  Laon, 
his  hero,  who  is  the  embodiment  of  ideal  de- 
votion to  the  regeneration  and  happiness  of 
mankind,  combats  all  the  sad  realities  which 
oppose  that  regeneration,  and  delay  the  coming 
of  that  happiness  to  which  he  calls  poor  erring 
humanity. 

This  is  the  dominant  idea  of  the  poem,  and 
Shelley  opens  the  subject  by  an  allegorical  myth, 
in  which  he  depicts,  under  striking  imagery,  the 
history  of  the  old  strife  between  good  and  evil 
in  the  world,  such  as  he  conceived  it.  To  the 
reader  it  is  a  somewhat  confusing  assemblage  of 
the  traditions  of  India  and  those  of  Greece,  of 
Manichaeism,  and  of  Christianity.  Good  and  evil 
are  twin  geniuses — equal  gods  ;  in  the  formidable 
strife  that  is  waged  between  them,  evil  is  repre- 
sented by  the  eagle,  the  bird  of  Jupiter,  who 
was  afterwards  depicted  in  the  "Prometheus" 
as  personifying  the  principle  of  evil  ;  and  the 
serpent  is  the  incarnation  of  the  Morning  Star 
or  principle  of  good,  the  Avatar  of  human 
genius,  the  Prometheus  of  the  Greeks,  the  Lucifer 
or  Satan  of  the  Bible. 

The  fair,  mysterious  woman  who  receives  the 
wounded  Serpent  in  her  bosom  is,  in  this  poem, 
the  incarnation  of  the  Spirit  of  Nature  ;  assuming 
the  rôle  that  in  "  Prometheus  "  is  to  be  played 
by  Asia — the  personification  of  Divine  love,  the 
new  Eve,  the  lover  of  the  Morning  Star,  of 
Prometheus — Lucifer. 

The  whole  of  this  allegory  is  embodied  in 
human  forms  in  "  Laon  and  Cythna.'^ 

The  principal  rôle  is  given  to  the  woman, 
Cythna. 

Shelley,  who  became  a  more  and  more  devoted 
follower  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft  since  his  union 

T  2 


276    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

with  her  daughter,  created  Cythna  to  be 
the  prophetess  and  apostle  of  the  regeneration 
of  her  sex.  If  Laon  awakes  in  Cythna  the 
love  of  freedom,  Cythna  awakes  in  Laon  the 
love  of  purity;  she  instinctively  loathes  the  joy- 
less sensuality  of  which  women  are  the  victims, 
which  flings  their  grace  and  beauty  as  a  prey 
to  the  hyena — lust.  She  desires  for  woman 
equality,  liberty,  justice,  and  dignity.  She  would 
avenge  the  outrage  and  insult  woman  has  too 
long  endured  ;  and  her  gentle  martyrdom  is 
more  potent  against  tyranny  than  the  armed 
resistance  of  Laon  ;    her  torturers  are  converted. 

All  these  thoughts  are  in  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft's  book,  the  "  Rights  of  Women,^'  but  the 
suavity,  the  passion,  the  divine  music  are  Shelley's.* 

If  ever  a  poet  has  existed  worthy  of  the 
French  Revolution,  he  is  certainly  the  author  of 
the  "  Revolt  of  Islam.'^  The  subject,  whatever 
may  be  said  of  it,  is  as  full  of  inspiration  to  a 
poet  as  the  rescue  of  the  Saviour's  tomb,  or  the 
discovery  of  a  new  World. 

Michelet,  after  narrating  the  stirring  episode  of 
the  Federation  in  his  "  History  of  the  Revolution," 
exclaims  :  "  I  have  held  in  my  hands  for  a 
moment,  on  the  altar  of  Federation,  the  un- 
covered heart  of  France  ;  I  saw  the  beating  of 
that  heroic  heart  at  the  first  ray  of  the  faith 
of  the  future.  How  then  should  I  worship  the 
little  gods  of  this  world }  I  had  caught  a  glimpse 
of  God.  May  the  sublime  vision,  that  for  an 
instant  was  ours  during  the  solemn  act  of  French 
fraternity,  lift  us  above  all  the  moral  misery 
of  our  times,  and   give   us   back  a   spark  of  the 

*  In  proof  of  this  the  reader  is  referred  to  Shelley's 
enthusiastic  panegyric  of  Mary  WoUstonecraft,  in  the  Dedica- 
tion to  his  Avife,  stanza  xii.  He  also  alludes,  later,  to  Mary's 
revolutionary  enthusiasm,  and  to  her  sojourn  in  Paris  during 
the  early  years  of  the  Revolution. 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  277 

heroic  fire  that  burned  in  the  hearts  of  our 
fathers  !  " 

Shelley's  great  soul  divined  that  which  drew 
from  Michelet  tears  of  admiration  and  love,  and 
it  is  difficult  to  read  the  episode  of  the  Federation 
in  canto  v.,  without  feeling  the  glow  of  that 
heroic  fire  of  which  Michelet  speaks. 

Shelley's  ideas  upon  the  essence  of  the  moral 
laws,  and  the  arbitrariness  of  human  institutions, 
brought  him  to  the  logical  conclusion  that  the 
impediments  to  marriage,  invented  by  man  and 
sanctioned  by  religion,  are  as  artificial  and  as 
immoral  as  the  law  of  its  indissolubility.  To  make 
this  conclusion  distinctly  evident,  he  placed  his 
hero  and  heroine,  Laon  and  Cythna,  in  the 
relationship  of  brother  and  sister — ^joined  together 
in  the  most  perfect  union  by  the  double  ties  of 
consanguinity  and  love. 

But  it  required  all  Shelley's  ingenuousness  to 
believe  that  such  doctrines  could  be  printed  and 
published  in  prudish  England.  Nevertheless, 
they  were  published  ;  a  {&\v  copies  of  a  first  edition 
were  circulated;  but  so  unfavourable  an  impres- 
sion was  produced  that  the  publishers  became 
alarmed,  stopped  further  publication,  and  requested 
Shelley  to  revise  his  poem.  He  was  forced,  there- 
fore, to  abolish  all  trace  of  fraternal  relation- 
ship between  Laon  and  Cythna,  and  likewise 
to  soften  several  passages  in  which  Atheism  and 
the  stake  were  too  perceptible.  "  Laon  and 
Cythna,"  revised,  corrected,  and  purified,  re- 
appeared under  the  title  of  the  "  Revolt  of  Islam.-" 

But  these  concessions  to  public  opinion  failed 
to  disarm  criticism.  Shelley  was  mistaken  when 
he  believed  the  public  would  receive  his  amended 
work  favourably,  and  without  prejudice.  Re- 
viled, derided,  and  stigmatised,  "  Laon  and 
Cythna'"  only  strengthened  the  existing  pre- 
judice against  the  author  of  "Queen  Mab." 


278    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

The  faithful  portrayal  of  his  own  mind,  which 
Shelley  regards   as   one   of  the   principal   merits 
of  "  Laon  and    Cythna,"    he   had   previously   at- 
tempted that  same  year  in  "  Prince  Athanasius," 
a  poem  still  more  personal  to  himself,  and  which 
has  remained  merely  a  sketch  or  fragment.     In 
the   whole   of  Shelley's  works   there   is   not   one 
more  psychological,  profound,  or  subtle,  and  if  we 
wish  to  know  the  very  finest  mood  of  the  poet's 
mind,   self-analysed    in  its    most   fugitive   phases 
and   in   its   most   delicate   shades,  it  is  there  we 
must   seek   it.      It   is  pure   spirit   analysing   and 
dissecting   itself    in   order    to    discover   the    un- 
discoverable  cause  of  the  infinite  uneasiness  with 
which  it  is  devoured.     But  at  last  Shelley  feared 
to  lose  his  foothold  in  a  world  of  such  subtlety, 
and    forbore    to     complete    the    study    lest    his 
analysis   might  become  morbid    and  beyond   the 
comprehension  of  the  most  attentive  reader.    Such 
as    it   is,   the    fragment    of  "■  Prince    Athanasius" 
is    of  the   highest   importance   for   what    I    may 
designate  as  the  psychological  autobiography  of 
the  poet.     Athanasius,  like  the  youth  in  "  Alastor," 
seeks  throughout  the  world  a  human  being  to  love. 
On  the  vessel  on  which  he  embarks,  a  lady  comes 
to  him  in  whom  he  thinks  he  sees  the  realisation 
of  his  ideal   of  love    and   beauty.     But    soon    he 
perceives     that     she    is    but     Paiidemos,    or    the 
earthly  and  unworthy  Venus,  who,   after  casting 
her  spell  over  him,  deserts  him.   Athanasius,  beaten 
down  by  sorrow,  dies.     To  his  death-bed  comes 
Urania,   she   who   alone  can    fill   and    satisfy  his 
soul,    and    kisses    his    lips.       Of  this    great    con- 
ception there  remain  but  a  few  lines  of  the  final 
fragment,    in    which    Shelley    depicts     Mary    as 
Urania,  and  the  admirable  address  to  Uranian  love, 

Thou  art  the  wine  whose  drunkenness  is  all 
We  can  desii-e,  O  Love  ! 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  279 

with  which  Shelley  longs  to  inebriate  the  human 
race. 

After  the  composition  of  "  Laon  and  Cythna," 
projects  of  very  various  kinds  occupied  Shelley's 
imagination  ;  he  read  the  pages  of  Tacitus  on 
Otho,  and  contemplated  writing  a  poem  on  the 
great  and  melancholy  emperor,  "  who,  both  tyrant 
and  tyrannicide,  hallowed  the  Roman  sword  by 
bathing  it  in  his  own  blood/^  But  amidst  his 
various  projects,  his  imagination  turns  towards  one 
object,  one  type,  the  incarnation  of  his  own  spirit 
and  his  own  love;  a  type  that  since  "Queen  Mab" 
has  been  constantly  rising  higher  and  higher, 
becoming  more  and  more  pure  and  ideal  as  it 
passed  through  Alastor,  Prince  Athanasius,  Laon 
in  the  "  Revolt  of  Islam,"  and  culminated  at  last  in 
the  final  conception  of  Prometheus. 

The  laborious  inception  of  the  great  idea  with 
which  this  work  is  penetrated,  its  continuing  and 
(to  his  mind)  imperfect  progress,  and  his  despair  at 
finding  the  world  deaf  to  the  voice  of  truth  and 
love,  overwhelm  his  soul,  much  more  than  any  ex- 
terior trials  can,  with  an  incurable  sadness  which 
he  expressed  in  heart-broken  words  ;  he  bitterly 
deplores  the  impotence  of  his  thoughts  which 
rise  and  fall  in  solitude,  the  vain  efforts  of  his 
imagination  which  succeeds  only  in  possessing 
"  one-half  of  the  shadow  which  it  creates." 

Once  more  descend 
The  shadows  of  my  soul  upon  mankind  ; 
For  to  those  hearts  with  which  they  never  blend, 
Thoughts  are  but  shadows  which  the  flashing  mind, 
From  the  swift  clouds  which  track  its  flight  of  fire, 
Casts  on  the  gloomy  world  it  leaves  behind. 

.He  longs  for  "a  chariot  of  cloud": 

Oh,  that  a  chariot  of  cloud  were  mine  ! 

I  would  sail  on  the  waves  of  the  billowy  wind 

To  the  mountain  peak  and  the  rocky  lake," 


28o    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

in  regions  inaccessible  to  common  mortals,  and  to 
which  he  showed  the  author  of  "  Childe  Harold  ^* 
the  path,  for  Byron  echoed  Shelley  in  the  beautiful 
stanza,  that  the  latter  loved  to  apply  to  himself: 

On  the  sea, 
The  boldest  steer  but  where  their  ports  invite  ; 
But  there  are  wanderers  o'er  eternity, 
Whose  bark  drives  on  and  on,  and  ne'er  shall  anchored  be. 

This  hopeless  quest  of  the  ideal  did  not,  however, 
prevent  Shelley  from  eagerly  watching  the  course 
of  political  events  in  his  native  land,  and  from 
making  use  of  events  which  stirred  the  mind  of  the 
people,  to  set  forth  his  own  ideas,  express  his 
views,  and  explain  the  lessons  of  contemporary 
history  by  the  light  of  his  own  theories. 

The  great  question  of  Parliamentary  Reform 
was  agitated  in  England  in  1817,  and  Shelley, 
ever  eager  for  the  rights  of  the  people,  published 
a  political  pamphlet  on  the  subject,  named:  "A 
Proposal  for  putting  Reform  to  the  Vote  through- 
out the  Country,  by  the  Hermit  of  Marlow." 

The  whole  question,  in  his  opinion,  was  this: 
Should  the  people  legislate  for  themselves,  or 
should  they  be  governed  by  laws  made  by  an 
assembly  which  does  not  even  represent  even 
one  thousandth  part  of  the  community  ?  We  may 
find  his  reply  in  his  Irish  pamphlets:  "No,  the 
people  may  not  be  thus  governed."  The  actual 
constitution  of  Parliament  appears  to  him  a 
spectacle  to  arouse  indignation  and  horror  : 

An  hospital  for  lunatics  is  the  only  theatre  where  we  can 
conceive  so  mournful  a  comedy  to  be  exhibited  as  this  mighty 
nation  now  exhibits.  .  .  .  The  prerogatives  of  Parliament  con- 
stitute a  sovereignty  which  is  exercised  in  contempt  of  the 
people  ...  for  its  misery  and  ruin.  ...  It  is  the  object 
of  the  Reform.ers  to  restore  the  people  to  a  sovereignty  thus 
held  in  their  contempt,  by  making  the  House  of  Commons 
a  complete  representative  of  the  will  of  the  people. 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  281 

In  order  to  attain  this  end,  Shelley  advised 
the  holding'  of  a  permanent  meeting  "  to  take 
into  consideration  the  most  effectual  measures 
for  ascertaining  the  will  ^^  of  the  people,  and 
put  his  name  down  on  the  subscription-list  for 
necessary  expenses,  for  a  sum  of  ;^ico,  being  a 
tenth  part  of  his  income.  As  to  the  requisite 
reforms,  Shelley  thought  with  Cobbett  that  annual 
parliaments  ought  to  be  adopted,  but  he  con- 
sidered the  English  nation  as  yet  insufficiently 
prepared  for  universal  suffrage — ■ 

The  consequence  of  the  immediate  extension  of  the 
elective  franchise  to  every  male  adult,  would  be  to  place 
power  in  the  hands  of  men  who  have  been  rendered  brutal, 
and  torpid,  and  ferocious,  by  ages  of  slavery.  ...  I  allow 
Major  Cartwright's  arguments  to  be  unanswerable  ;  ab- 
stractedly it  is  the  right  of  every  human  being  to  have  a 
share  in  the  Government.  But  Mr.  Paine's  arguments  are 
also  unanswerable  ;  a  pure  republic  may  be  shown  ...  to 
be  that  system  of  social  order,  the  fittest  to  produce  the 
happiness  and  promote  the  genuine  eminence  of  man. 
Yet  nothing  can  less  consist  with  reason,  or  afford  smaller 
hopes  of  any  beneficial  issue,  than  the  plan  which  should 
abolish  the  regal  and  the  aristocratical  branches  of  our 
constitution,  before  the  public  mind,  through  many  grada- 
tions of  improvement,  shall  have  arrived  at  the  maturity 
which  can  disregard  these  symbols  of  its  childhood. 

The  moderate  reform  desired  by  Shelley  was 
accomplished,  more  than  half  a  century  later,  by 
Mr.  Gladstone. 

On  Nov.  6th,  18 17,  occurred  the  premature  death 
of  the  young  Princess  Charlotte,  daughter  of 
George  IV.  and  Caroline  of  Brunswick,  the  idol 
of  the  English  people.  Suddenly  snatched  from 
domestic  joys  that  had  consoled  her  for  an  un- 
happy childhood,  the  ''fair  and  innocent  princess" 
carried  with  her  to  the  grave  the  lamentations 
of  all  England. 

Shelley  was  shocked  at  the  national  mourning 
for  a  woman,  who,  although  interesting  from  her 


2P2    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

misfortunes  and  her  premature  death,  was  yet 
chiefly  so  as  a  Princess  and  future  Queen  of 
England.  In  grief  so  solemn  and  ostentatious 
he  detected  signs  of  serviHty  and  baseness,  and 
"the  Hermit  of  Marlow  "  wrote  an  "Address 
to  the  People  "  with  the  following  motto  :  "  We 
pity  the  plumage,  but  forget  the  dying  bird/' 

The  dying  bird  thus  forgotten  by  the  English 
people  in  their  pity  for  its  bright  plumage,  repre- 
sented the  common  and  hidden  miseries  of  suffer- 
ing humanity,  the  sorrows  of  the  people,  of  which 
poor  Charlotte's  destiny  formed  a  very  small 
part. 

Shelley  understands  the  public  mourning  of 
the  Athenians  for  the  death  of  those  whose  valour, 
intelligence,  or  genius  had  illumined  the  Republic  ; 
he  would  have  thought  it  well  that,  when  Milton 
died,  "  the  universal  English  nation  had  been 
clothed  in  solemn  black,"  that  "  the  French 
nation  should  have  enjoined  a  public  mourning 
at  the  death  of  Rousseau  and  Voltaire."  "  It  were 
well  done  also,"  he  says,  "  that  men  should  mourn 
for  any  public  calamity  which  has  befallen  their 
country  or  the  world,  though  it  be  not  death. 
This  helps  to  maintain  that  connection  between 
one  man  and  another,  and  all  men  considered  as  a 
whole,  which  is  the  bond  of  social  life.  There  should 
be  public  mourning  when  those  events  take  place 
which  make  all  good  men  mourn  in  their  hearts — 
the  rule  of  foreign  or  domestic  tyrants,  the  abuse 
of  public  faith,  the  wresting  of  old  and  venerable 
laws  to  the  murder  of  the  innocent,  the  established 
insecurity  of  all  those  .  .  .  who  cherish  an 
unconquerable  enthusiasm  for  public  good.  .  . 
When  the  French  Republic  was  extinguished  the 
world  ought  to  have  mourned."  In  an  eloquent 
parallel  he  compares  the  death  of  the  young,  ■ 
amiable,  and  interesting  Princess,  "the  last  and 
the  best  of  her  race,"  with  that  of  the  three  men 


SHELLEY  AT  BATH.  283 

who  were  executed  for  political  offences  on  the 
same  day — Brandreth,  Ludlam,  and  Turner — 
whose  frightful  deaths  by  hanging  and  decapita- 
tion constitute  a  cala'mit}^  that  the  English  na- 
tion should  lament  with  inconsolable  grief.*  He 
ends  with  an  eloquent  peroration  which  we  must 
quote  in  its  entirety  : 

Mourn  then,  People  of  England  !  Clothe  yourselves 
in  solemn  black.  Let  the  bells  be  tolled.  Think  of  mortality 
and  change.  Shroud  yourselves  in  solitude  and  the  gloom 
of  sacred  sorrow.  Spare  no  symbol  of  universal  grief.  Weep 
—mourn— lament.  Fill  the  great  City— fill  the  boundless 
fields  with  lamentation  and  the  echo  of  groans.  A  beautiful 
Princess  is  dead— she  who  should  have  been  the  Queen  of 
her  beloved  nation,  and  whose  posterity  should  have  ruled  it 
for  ever.  She  loved  the  domestic  affections,  and  cherished 
arts  which  adorn,  and  valour  which  defends.  She  was 
amiable,  and  would  have  become  wise,  but  she  was  young, 
and  in  the  flower  of  youth  the  despoiler  came.  Liberty  is 
dead  !  Slave  !  I  charge  thee,  disturb  not  the  depth  and 
solemnity  of  our  grief  by  any  meaner  sorrow.  If  one  has 
died  who  was  like  her  that  should  have  ruled  over  this  land, 
hke  Liberty,  young,  innocent,  and  lovely,  know  that  the 
power  through  which  that  one  perished  was  God,  and  that  it 
was  a  private  grief  But  man  has  murdered  Liberty  ;  and 
whilst  the  life  was  ebbing  from  its  wound,  there  descended 
on  the  heads  and  on  the  hearts  of  every  human  thing  the 
sympathy  of  an  universal  blast  and  curse.  Fetters  heavier 
than  iron  weigh  upon  us,  because  they  bind  our  souls.  We 
move  about  in  a  dungeon  more  pestilential  than  damp  and 
narrow  walls,  because  the  earth  is  its  floor  and  the  heavens 
•are  its  roof  Let  us  follow  the  corpse  of  British  Liberty 
slowly  and  reverentially  to  its  tomb  ;  and  if  some  glorious 
Phantom  should  appear,  and  make  its  throne  of  broken 
swords  and  sceptres  and  royal  crowns  trampled  in  the  dust, 
let  us  say  that  the  Spirit  of  Liberty  has  arisen  from  its 
grave,  and  left  all  that  was  gross  and  mortal  there,  and  kneel 
down  to  worship  it  as  our  Queen. 

The  foregoing  lines  became  subsequently  the 
theme  of  Shelley's  version  of  "  God  save  the  King  " 
— God  save  Liberty  ! 

*  Shelley  lifts  up  his  voice  in  strong  reprobation  of  the 
penalty  of  death  :  "  Nothing  is  more  horrible  than  that  man 
should  for  any  cause  take  the  life  of  man.^' 


CHAPTER  XV. 

SHELLEY  IN  ITALY— MILAN,  LEGHORN,  LUCCA, 
VENICE,  THE  CAPUCHINS,  FLORENCE,  AND 
PADUA  —  "  ROSALIND  AND  HELEN,"  AND- 
"JULIAN   AND   MADDALO" — 1818. 

Early  in  February,  1818,  Shelley,  who  was 
impatient  to  get  into  a  milder  climate,  on  account 
of  the  increasing  delicacy  of  his  health,  bade 
adieu  to  Marlow.  It  was  with  profound  regret 
that  he  left  the  scenes  associated  with  the  in- 
tellectual pleasure  which  he  had  enjoyed  in  the 
composition  of  "  Laon  and   Cythna." 

On  the  9th  March,  William  Shelley,  Clara 
Everina  Shelley  (born  on  the  3rd  September, 
1 8 17,  at  Marlow),  and  Clara  Allegra,  Byron's 
daughter,  were  duly  baptized  at  St.  Giles's-in- 
the-Fields,  and  on  the  nth  Shelley  took  his 
last  look  at  the  shores  of  England. 

A  new  life  was  about  to  begin  for  him 
under  the  sunny  sky  of  Italy,  ''that  paradise  of 
exiles  and  pariahs,'^  as  he  calls  it.  His  genius, 
freed  from  all  enmities  and  resentments,  was 
about  to  soar  boldly  into  the  serene  spheres  of 
the  purely  ideal.  On  losing  sight  of  England, 
Shelley  seemed  to  lose  sight  of  earth  altogether; 
by  daily  contact  with  the  masterpieces  of  Italian 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  285 

Art  and  Nature  his  taste  was  refined,  his  con- 
ceptions were  elevated  and  purified  ;  he  became 
invested  with  the  beauty  and  grandeur  of  the 
antique,  through  his  absorbed  contemplation  of 
its  ruins,  his  assiduous  study  of  sculpture,  his 
researches  into  Plato  and  yEschylus,  in  short, 
his  loving  worship  of  all  the  arts.  His  faculties 
expanded,  together  with  his  senses  and  his  frame, 
under  these  favourable  physical  conditions  ;  and 
to  this  epoch  we  owe  the  incomparable  poet 
of  the  "  Prometheus/'  the  "  Epipsychidion,"  the 
"Adonaïs,"  and  the  ''Hellas." 

We  have  the  history  of  this  transformation, 
this  full  bloom  of  his  poetic  genius,  in  his 
"  Letters  from  Italy."  These  letters  are  held 
by  the  best  judges  to  occupy  an  exceptional 
place  in  the  epistolary  literature  of  the  century. 
If  they  do  not  possess  the  brilliancy,  the  humour, 
the  petulance,  and  the  wonderful  "  go  "  of  Byron's 
letters,  they  possess  greater  solidity  and  serious- 
ness, a  deeper  passion,  a  more  sincere  enthusiasm, 
and  absolute  frankness  of  thought  and  feeling. 
Mr.  Garnett  has  justly  remarked  that  Shelley's 
letters  represent  exactly  the  way  in  which  the 
poet,  as  a  poet,  contemplates  life  and  Nature. 
A  great  deal  of  the  pleasure  which  they  produce 
proceeds  from  their  close  agreement  with  the 
poetical  works  upon  which  they  are  the  in- 
voluntary commentary.  They  prove  that  the 
ideal  world  of  Shelley  was  to  him  a  real  world, 
and  that  the  habitual  level  of  the  life  of  the 
man  was  not  lower  than  that  of  the  poet. 

On  the  1 2th  of  March,  18 18,  Shelley  em- 
barked on  the  Lady  CastlereagJi  for  Calais.  He 
was  accompanied  by  his  wife,  Miss  Clairmont, 
Elise  (the  Swiss  girl),  ]\Iilly  (a  young  maid- 
servant from  Marlow),  his  own  two  children,  and 
the  little  Allegra,  who  was  only  fourteen  months 
old.     He   hoped    to   bring  about  a  reconciliation 


286     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

between  Byron  and  the  mother,  throu,:jh  the 
medium  of  this  child.  The  party  travelled 
through  France  by  way  of  Calais,  Rheims, 
Langres,  Dijon,  and  Lyons,  Shelle)^  reading 
aloud  SchlegeFs  work,  and  a  new  poem  by 
Hunt,  called  "  Foliage." 

On  the  26th  of  March,  Shelley  crossed  the 
Pass  of  the  Échelles,  and  entered  the  valleys 
of  the  Alps.  The  winding  road,  cut  in  the  rock 
on  the  face  of  the  mountain,  which  leads  to 
Chambéry,  produced  a  vivid  impression  upon 
him.  He  declares  that  the  site  resembles  that 
described  in  the  "Prometheus"  of  .^schylus,  and 
proceeds  to  draw  an  exquisite  word-picture  of 
it.  But  although  the  poet,  whose  mind  is  already 
full  of  his  '^  Prometheus,"  seeks  for  images  in  pro- 
portion with  his  subject  amid  the  grand  natural 
scenery  of  the  Alpine  ranges,  the  humanitarian 
philosopher  is  moved  to  the  deepest  pity  by 
the  poverty  and  wretchedness  of  the  inhabitants 
of  those  fertile  valleys.  Shelley  remarks  con- 
tinually upon  this  contrast  between  man  and 
Nature  while  he  journeys  into  Italy,  and  he  is 
disposed  to  exaggerate  it  ingenuously,  in  order 
to  stigmatise  the  tyranny  of  Governments, 
which  he  regards  as  its  sole  true  cause,  with 
greater  truth  and  liberty.  These  melancholy  im- 
pressions are,  however,  speedily  dispelled  by  the 
charms  of  Alpine  Nature;  while  the  carriages 
are  climbing  the  ascent  of  Mont  Cenis,  Shelley 
becomes  intoxicated  with  delight,  he  sings  as 
he  goes.  While  descending  the  Alps,  his  chest 
expands,  his  sensations  become  more  acute  and 
vivid  under  the  influence  of  the  beauty  of  the 
country  and  the  serenity  of  the  sky  ;  he  feels 
more  keenly  than  ever  that  he  depends  upon 
these  things  for  life.  With  what  delight  he 
hears  for  the  first  time  at  Susa  a  pretty  Italian 
woman  speaking  "  the  clear,  the  perfect  language 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY,  287 

of  Italy,  after  the  nasal,  clipped  cacophony  of 
the  French"!  The  first  objects  which  he  meets 
in  that  favoured  land  delight  and  enchant  him  ; 
those  objer*-"  are,  firstly,  the  Arch  of  Augustus 
at  Susa,  which  is  like  the  gate  of  Italy  ;  and 
a  fair  woman  whose  graceful  mien  and  blonde 
beauty  recalled  Fuseli's  Eve. 

Shelley  arrived  at  Milan  on  the  4th  of  April, 
and  remained  there  for  a  month.  He  was  parti- 
cularly struck  by  two  things,  the  Duomo  and 
the  Opera.  But  the  lake  of  Como  had  a  far 
greater  attraction  for  the  poet.  The  beauty  of 
its  shores,  and  its  lovely  villas,  Tanzi,  Tremez- 
zina,  Sommariva,  Pliniana,  is,  according  to  him, 
to  be  surpassed  only  by  that  of  the  Lakes  of 
Killarney.  He  would  have  liked  to  settle  down 
permanently  in  one  of  those  enchanting  places, 
Pliniana,  a  half-ruined  villa,  with  great  laurel 
hedges,  overlooking  the  finest  landscape  in  the 
world.  He  had,  however,  to  relinquish  his  own 
wishes  in  deference  to  those  of  Mary,  who  did 
not  relish  "that  divine  solitude  of  Como^'  so 
keenly  as  he  did,  and  he  bent  his  steps  towards 
Pisa,  being  attracted  thither  by  the  vicinity  of 
the  sea. 

He  left  Milan  with  great  regret  and  crossed 
the  Apennines,  which  he  considered  much  less 
beautiful  than  the  Alps  :  "  An  immense  and 
indeterminate  scene,  in  which  the  imagination 
cannot  find  a  shelter.''  On  the  other  hand,  the 
plains  of  Parma  had  the  aspect  of  a  garden  in 
his  eyes.  He  remained  only  three  or  four  days  at 
Pisa,  "  a  large  and  disagreeable  town  almost 
without  inhabitants,"  and  arrived  on  the  loth  of 
May  at  Leghorn,  where  he  was  detained  a  full 
month  by  the  pleasure  which  he  derived  from  the 
society  of  the  Gisbornes,  new  friends  to  whom  he 
was  introduced  by  Godwin.  '  Mrs.  Gisbornc,  who 
from  her  childhood  had  led  an  adventurous  life. 


288    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET 

was  peculiarly  calculated  to  attract  and  fascinate 
Shelley.  She  was  the  daughter  of  an  English 
merchant  settled  at  Constantinople,  and,  at  the 
age  of  eight  years,  she  was  separated  from  her 
mother.  Her  father  brought  her  up  with  the 
greatest  care  in  t'le  free  society  of  the  English 
merchants  and  diplomatists.  In  1785,  Jeremy 
Bentham,  then  visiting  the  Bosphorus,  had  re- 
marked the  young  girl,  who,  at  fifteen,  was  quite 
womanly,  and  exhibited  extraordinary  capacity 
for  the  arts.  He  played  Eichner's  sonatas  for  the 
piano  and  the  violin  with  her.  Shortly  afterwards 
we  find  her  at  Rome  with  her  father,  taking 
lessons  in  painting  from  Angelica  Kaufmann. 
The  English  painter,  Barry,  was  so  much  struck 
by  some  of  her  sketches  that  he  strongly  urged 
her  to  devote  herself  exclusively  to  painting.  At 
Rome  she  married  Mr.  William  Reveley,  an  archi- 
tect, who  brought  her  to  London,  where  she 
formed  a  social  alliance  with  all  the  advanced 
intellects  of  the  time — for  she  fully  shared  the 
Liberal  convictions  of  her  husband — and  placed 
herself  under  the  philosophic  guidance  of  Godwin 
and  Mary  Wollstonecraft.  When  Mary  was  born 
she  took  her  to  her  own  house,  and  tended  her 
with  maternal  solicitude.  She  became  a  widow 
«arly,  and,  having  refused  Godwin,  she  married 
Mr.  John  Gisborne  in  1800,  and  retired  to  Italy 
with  her  new  husband  and  her  son  by  her  first 
marriage.  Mr.  Gisborne  gave  his  wife's  son  a 
sound  scientific  education.  When  Shelley  found 
the  Gisborne  family  installed  at  Leghorn,  Henry 
Reveley  was  an  engineer  of  great  promise,  with  a 
pronounced  taste  for  mechanics  and  the  new 
applications  of  science. 

The  story  of  Maria  Gisborne,  her  relations 
with  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  her  beauty,  her  charac- 
ter, and,  above  all,  her  freedom  from  religious 
or  social  prejudices,    could  not   fail  to  captivate 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  2S9 

the  inflammable  soul  of  the  poet.  As  for  the 
husband,  he  was  an  excellent  man — placidity 
itself — with  but  little  capacity  for  business,  in 
which  he  had  never  succeeded  ;  erudite,  well-read, 
not  without  interest  in  poetry  in  general,  and 
enthusiastic  about  Calderon.  He  had  initiated 
his  wife  into  the  beauties  of  the  Magico  Prodi- 
gioso  and  the  Autos,  and  in  their  school  Shelley 
learned  to  love  that  other  Shakespeare  whon\ 
he  had  met  more  than  once  unconsciously, 
and  who  was  thenceforth  to  share  the  poet's 
devotion  to  the  author  of  MacbetJi  and  King 
Lear. 

These  agreeable  relations,  which  speedily  deve- 
loped into  a  warm  and  close  friendship,  diverted 
Shelley's  thoughts  from  the  unpleasantness  of  that 
great  commercial  town,  which  is  the  most  untaught 
and  unattractive  of  the  Italian  cities,  and  he  bade 
farewell  with  sincere  regret  to  the  accomplished 
woman  who  was  destined  to  inspire  one  of  his 
most  original  poems,  a  masterpiece  of  humour  " 
and  grace,  the  "  Letter  to  Maria  Gisbornc."  At 
the  Baths  of  Lucca,  Avhere  there  were  English 
people  only,  Shelley  was  free  to  give  himself  up 
entirely  to  his  studious  tastes  and  the  carrying  out 
of  his  poetic  plans.  He  rejoiced  in  being  restored 
to  silence,  and  that  chosen  society  of  all  the  ages, 
his  books,  which  he  had  carefully  packed  before 
leaving  England,  and  found  again  at  Lucca,- 
and  m  his  picturesque  walks  in  the  chestnuï 
woods,  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  or  across  the 
mountains.  His  dwelling  was  a  restored  and 
repainted  cottage  in  the  midst  of  grand  scenery, 
surrounded  by  wooded  mountains,  surmounted 
here  and  there  by  the  bare  crest  of  some  far- 
distant  Apennine.  The  house  stood  in  a  little 
garden,  with  a  laurel  grove  at  the  end  of  it  so 
thick  that  the  sun  could  not  pierce  it  with  his  rays. 
The  poet's  happy  days  at  Lucca  were  passed   in 

u 


290    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

walks  with  Mary  in  the  neighbourhood,  long  ex- 
cursions on  horseback  to  the  Prato  fiorito,  a  field 
of  flowers  on  the  summit  of  one  of  the  Apennines, 
or  to  the  sanctuary  of  the  Monte  Pelerino^  the 
loftiest  of  those  mountains  ;  attentive  observation 
of  the  slightest  perturbations  of  the  atmosphere, 
which  he  studied  in  order  to  paint  it  ;  contempla- 
tion of  the  beautiful  Italian  evenings  ;  study  of  the 
great  Italian  poets,  Ariosto,  Petrarch,  and  Tasso  ; 
and  in  reading  and  translating  Plato. 

The  admirable  translation  of  the  "Banquet  of 
Plato,"  which  dates  from  this  epoch,  was  the  work 
of  ten  mornings.  Although  this  translation  seemed 
to  him  very  insufficient  to  convey  in  English  the 
inimitable  graces  of  the  original,  it  may  safely  be 
affirmed  that,  not  since  the  Renaissance,  has  Plato 
found  so  enthusiastic  an  interpreter,  one  so  apt  to 
comprehend  and  to  embody  all  the  charm  and 
poetry  of  his  language.  Mrs.  Shelley  is  justified  in 
her  claim  for  this  translation,  that  it  presents  the 
great  Athenian  to  English  readers  in  a  style 
worthy  of  him. 

In  translating  Plato's  "  Banquet,"  Shelley  also 
purposed  to  give  Mary  an  idea  of  the  sentiments 
and  manners  {nicsurs)  of  the  Athenians.  With  this 
object  he  began  an  essay  which  was  to  form  a 
preface  to  his  translation,  upon  the  literature,  the 
arts,  and  the  manners  of  the  Athenians.  We  have 
only  a  fragment  of  this  essay,  entitled,  "  A  Dis- 
course upon  the  Manners  of  the  Ancients  in  rela- 
tion to  the  subject  of  Love."  Shelley's  mind  was 
deeply  impressed  with  the  unrivalled  grandeur  of 
that  unique  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  human 
mind  ;  and  as  he  held  that  no  person  had  hitherto 
depicted  the  life  of  the  ancient  Greeks  with  exacti- 
tude and  fidelity,  he  designed  to  supply  the 
deficiency.  To  do  this  it  was  necessary,  in  his 
belief,  to  divest  himself  of  all  modern  prejudices 
and  considerations,  to   become  altogether  pagan, 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  291 

entirely  Greek.  In  his  praiseworthy  work,  ''  Le 
Voj^age  du  Jeune  Anacharsis,'^  the  Abbé  Bar- 
thélémy commits  the  fault  of  never  forgetting  that 
he  is  a  Christian  and  a  Frenchman;  and  although 
Wieland  makes  a  tolerable  pagan,  he  still  has  too 
much  political  prejudice.  He  is  too  much  afraid  of 
diminishing  the  interest  of  his  recital  by  depicting 
sentiments  with  which  a  modern  European  could 
not  sympathise.  All  books  written  upon  the 
Greeks  seemed  to  Shelley  to  have  been  written 
for  children,  and  on  principles  of  timid  prudery 
incompatible  with  truth. 

To  begin  the  work  by  an  explanation  of  the 
Greek  ideas  upon  the  subject  of  love,  was  to 
take  the  bull  by  the  horns,  and  no  one  could 
realise  more  fully  than  Shelley  the  conditions 
imposed  upon  any  writer  who  should  try  to  re- 
store to  life  the  true  traditions  of  Greek  antiquity 
upon  this  obscure  and  delicate  subject.  It  is 
deeply  to  be  regretted  that  he  did  no  more 
than  sketch  the  outline  of  the  picture,  perhaps 
because  he  was  deterred  by  the  very  delicacy 
of  the  subject  ;  but,  such  as  it  is,  his  sketch  is 
rich  in  fruitful  ideas  and  original  views.  No  more 
just  idea  of  the  position  of  woman  in  ancient 
times,  and  the  causes  of  her  inferiority  and  degra- 
dation, could  be  given.  While  doing  justice  to  the 
progress  in  the  relations  of  the  two  sexes  accom- 
plished by  Christianity  and  Chivalry,  Shelley 
objected  with  justice  to  the  exaggeration  of  the 
merit  of  that  revolution,  and  would  .not  admit 
the  pretension  that  the  Greeks  knew  nothing  of 
sentimental  or  ideal  love,  and  the  claim  of  that 
passion  to  be  the  exclusive  product  of  Christian 
or  chivalrous  ideas. 

Amid  the  charms  of  solitude,  and  the  calm 
of  his  mind,  which  was  refreshed  by  the  living 
spring  of  Nature  and  Plato,  Shelley  once  more 
found    inspiration.      In    the    middle    of    August 

u  2 


292    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

(i8i8),  upon  the  entreaty  of  Mary,  he  finished 
his  poem  of  "  Rosalind  and  Helen,"  *  which  he 
had  begun  at  Marlow,  one  of  those  rare  works 
in  which  Shelley,  coming  down  from  his  dreamy 
heights,  touches  ordinary  life,  and  consents  to 
depict  purely  human   passions. 

"Rosalind  and  Helen"  possessed  a  special 
interest  for  Mary.  It  is  easy  for  any  reader 
who  has  even  a  superficial  knowledge  of  Shelley^s 
history  to  discover  Claire  and  Mary,  separated 
for  awhile,  and  at  enmity,  under  the  names  of 
Rosalind  and  Helen,  and  to  find  Shelley  himself 
in  Lionel.  He  wrote  this  narrative  in  the  hopes 
of  cementing  the  friendship  of  the  two  young, 
women  who  were  now  reunited  under  his  roof, 
and,  in  fact,  from  thenceforth  (iSiS)  their  mutual 
attachment  was  undisturbed. 

On  the  17th  of  August  Shelley  went  to  Venice» 
accompanied  by  Claire,  to  visit  Lord  Byron. 
The  poor  mother  hoped  that  Shelley  would  pro- 
cure permission  for  her  to  see  her  daughter  again. 
At  Padua  Shelley  took  a  gondola,  and,  by  a 
strange  chance,  he  selected  a  gondolier  who  had 
formerly  been  in  Byron's  service.  This  man 
talked  incessantly  of  the  Giovanotto  higlese,  who 
bore  an  outlandish  name,  lived  sumptuously, 
and  spent  money,  lavishly.  Venice  was  reached 
at  midnight,  and  the  gondola  sustained  a  tempest 
of  wind,  rain,  and  lightning  in  the  lagoon. 

On  the  day  after  his  arrival,  Shelley,  leaving 
Claire  with  the  Hoppners.f  went  to  Byron's. 
dwelling.  The  conversation  between  the  friends 
soon  turned  upon  the  delicate  matter  that  Shelley 

*  "  Rosalind  and  Helen  "  was  published  by  Oilier  in  the 
spring  of  1819,  together  with  "  Verses  written  in  the  Euganean 
Mountains,"  the  '•  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty,"  and  the 
sonnet  "  Ozymandias." 

t  Mr.  Hoppnerwas  British  Consul  at  Venice,  and  Mrs. 
Hoppner  had  taken  charge  of  the  little  Allegra. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  293 

had  so  much  at  heart,  and  the  latter  beh'eved 
that  he  had  gained  some  points,  Byron  seemed 
even  disposed  to  give  up  the  child  to  her  mother. 
Their  interview,  which  was  full  of  kindliness  and 
good-humour,  was  prolonged  by  an  excursion  in 
a  gondola,  and  the  two  poets  indulged  in  the 
latter  diversion  several  times  during  Shelley's 
stay  at  Venice.  To  that  sojourn  we  owe  the 
poem  of  "Julian  and  Maddalo,"  so  eloquently 
eulogised  by  Mr.  Rossetti,  who  declares  that  it 
alone  would  suffice  to  justify  the  poet's  deathless 
fame,  and  holds  that,  together  with  the  "  Pro- 
metheus "  and  "  The  Cenci,"  it  completes  the 
supreme  trinity  of  Shelley's  genius. 

The  reader  will  easily  recognise  the  two  friends 
under  the  names  of  Julian  and  Maddalo.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  depict  two  such  different  natures 
better  than  Shelley  depicts  them  in  his  preface, 
and  to  tell  the  whole  truth  with  greater  tact 
and  delicacy.  In  his  letters  to  his  friends  he 
is  sharper  and  more  caustic  ;  it  is  in  them 
that  we  must  seek  for  his  real  views  of  the 
genius  and  the  character  of  the  author  of  "  Don 
Juan." 

Byron,  who  was  anxious  to  have  Shelley  near 
him,  offered  him  the  use  of  his  villa,  called 
■del  Cappucini,  near  Este.  Shelley  accepted  this 
proposal,  and  pressed  his  wife  to  join  him  there. 
During  his  absence  he  had  been  very  anxious 
about  her,  and  had  written  several  letters  to 
her,  full  of  the  tenderness  of  his  loving  heart, 
and  of  truly  paternal  solicitude.  He  had  also 
addressed  some  pretty  verses  to  her.  His  in- 
structions for  the  journey,  which  she  was  to  make 
under  the  guidance  of  the  accomplished  Paolo, 
were  of  the  most  minute  and  thoughtful  kind. 

Mary,  who  was  longing  to  rejoin  her  husband 
came  with  all  haste  to  Este.  The  Villa  dei 
Cappucini,    an    ancient   residence    of   the   Medici, 


294    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

was  situated  in  the  neighbourhood  of  that  city, 
on  the  summit  of  a  httle  hill  surrounded  by 
several  loftier  ones.  The  house  was  pleasant 
and  commodious;  a  wall  enclosed  between  trellised 
vines,  or  Pergola,  as  the  Italians  call  it,  led  from 
the  house  to  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  where 
there  was  a  summer-house.  This  was  used  by 
Shelley  as  his  study,  and  there  he  wrote  "Julian 
and  Maddalo,'^  and  began  the  "Prometheus."  The 
praises  of  the  villa,  the  views  from  it,  and  the 
great  plain  of  Lombardy  which  stretched  below,, 
are  sung  in  many  of  the  poet's  letters  of  this 
peaceful  epoch. 

A  melancholy  event  darkened  the  fair  days 
of  the  Villa  dei  Cappucini  ;  this  was  the  death 
of  the  little  Clara,  who  had  been  taken  ill  with 
dysentery  during  the  journey.  The  child  was 
taken  from  Este  to  Venice  for  medical  advice, 
but  she  died  almost  immediately  upon  arriving 
there,  and  the  sorrowing  parents  returned  to 
mourn  her  in  their  saddened  home. 

To  Shelley,  beautiful  Venice,  with  "  its  silent 
streets  paved  with  water,"  was  a  bitter  and 
lugubrious  spectacle.  He  saw  nothing  there  save- 
the  dungeons,  the  pio77ibi,  and  the  oubliettes,  a 
city  enslaved  from  the  day  on  which  the  rights 
of  the  people  had  been  usurped,  but  more  de- 
graded still  since  its  subjection  to  the  Austrian 
yoke.  "  I  had  no  idea,"  he  writes,  "  of  the 
excess  to  which  avarice,  cowardice,  superstition, 
ignorance,  passionless  debauchery,  and  all  the 
unspeakable  brutalities  which  degrade  human 
nature,  may  be  carried,  until  I  had  seen  Venice!" 

No  traveller  in  Italy  has  felt  the  misfortune 
of  that  fair  land  become  the  prey  of  the  foreigner, 
so  keenly  as  Shelley  ;  no  poet  has  so  bitterly 
deplored  the  shame  and  misery  of  her  servitude,. 
or  sung  so  nobly  her  hopes  of  a  national  re- 
surrection ;    none   has    associated    himself  so    en- 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  295 

thusiastically  with  her  every  attempt  to  accomplish 
her  freedom. 

Petrarch's  house  and  tomb,  sacredly  preserved 
at  Arqua,  attracted  him  to  the  Euganean  Mountains, 
but  the  deeper  feehng  for  liberty  mingles  with 
that  for  Nature,  in  the  emotions  of  the  disciple  of 
Laura's  lover,  when  he  contemplates  Padua,"where 
the  lamp  of  learning  burns  no  longer,  or  is  only 
a  mocking  meteor."  In  the  ruins  of  Florence, 
he  beholds  the  chastisement  of  an  inexpiable 
crime,  the  attempt  against  the  liberty  of  Pisa, 
and,  on  rising  from  the  perusal  of  Sismondi's 
"  Italian  Republics,'^  he  utters  in  song  the  heroic 
legend  of  Marenghi,  who  avenged  his  banishment 
from  Florence  by  burning  a  Pisan  ship. 

Winter  was  approaching,  and  Shelley  left  the 
Villa  dei  Cappucini  on  the  5th  November,  18 18, 
for  the  South  of  Italy.  After  two  days'  journey 
by  very  bad  roads,  he  arrived  at  Ferrara,  and 
recorded  his  admiration  of  the  "true  country  of 
Pasiphaë,''  through  which  he  had  passed.  He 
afterwards  remembered  the  little  white  oxen  of 
the  plain  of  Ferrara,  when  he  wrote  his  satirical 
drama  Œdipus,  in  which  he  places  the  English 
Royal  Pasiphaë  upon  the  stage.  Ferrara,  at  the 
time  of  Shelley's  visit,  was  no  longer  the  adven- 
turous city  of  Ariosto  ;  but,  although  deserted  and 
melancholy,  it  had  still  preserved  an  air  of 
grandeur  and  magnificence,  something  fanciful, 
too,  which  recalled  its  poetic  memories.  Shelley 
visited  the  Cathedral,  but  was  driven  from  it  by 
the  importunity  of  the  beggars,  before  he  had 
time  to  discover  whether  the  fresco  of  the  Last 
Judgment  is  a  copy  or  an  original  by  Michael 
Angclo;*  and  the  famous  Public  Library,  con- 
taining 160,000  volumes,  and  immensely  rich 
in   manuscripts   and   miniatures,    "  whose    colours 

*  A  superb  inspiration  of  Bastianino  after  Michael  Angelo. 


296    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

are  as  fresh  as  though  they  dated  from  yesterday." 
The  great  attraction  of  Ferrara  for  Shelley  lay  in 
the  recollections  of  his  brother  poets,  Ariosto  and 
Tasso,  He  pauses  in  deeply-moved  contempla- 
tion before  the  tomb  of  Ariosto,  in  one  of  thé 
great  halls  of  the  Library,  surmounted  by  an 
expressive  bust  of  the  poet,  or  before  his  arm-chair, 
a  common  piece  of  furniture  enough  in  walnut- 
wood,  picturing  to  himself  Ariosto  still  sitting 
there,  the  open  book  of  "Satires"  close  at  hand, 
and  the  old  ink-stand  aiding  the  living  poet's 
fancy.  But  nothing  interests  him  so  deeply  as 
the  autograph  manuscripts  of  the  two  poets  ;  the 
Satires  of  Ariosto,  and  a  manuscript  of  the  Geru- 
salemme  Liberata,  also  some  sonnets  of  Tasso's 
to  his  persecutor.  Shelley's  mind,  always  in  quest 
of  some  manifestation  beyond  the  present  and 
tangible  object,  seeks  to  divine  the  symbol  of 
their  soul  and  their  genius  in  these  mute  characters, 
subjecting  them  to  close  examination  and  analysis. 
He  peruses  those  sonnets  v/hich  Tasso  wrote  in 
his  prison — they  are  in  praise  of  his  tormentor, 
and,  moved  by  profound  pity  for  the  weakness 
of  the  noble  victim,  he  comprehends  and  pardons. 
Shelley  does  not  fail  to  visit  the  Hospital  of 
Saint  Anne,  in  which  is  the  prison  "which  for 
seven  years  and  three  months  shut  out  that 
glorious  being  from  the  air  and  the  light,  where 
those  poetic  influences  which  he  has  communicated 
to  thousands  of  readers,  were  nurtured."  In  its 
darkest  corner  he  saw  the  mark  of  the  chains, 
fastened  to  the  wall,  by  wdiich  his  hands  and  feet 
were  bound.  There,  in  his  mind's  eye,  he  beheld 
the  unfortunate  poet  ;  his  eyes  fixed  upon  the 
barred  window,  following  with  his  despairing  gaze 
the  beloved  shadow  of  Leonora,  towards  the 
tower  of  the  palace,  which  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
distance.  He  piously  detaches  a  morsel  of  the 
wood  of  the  real  door  of  this  dark  and  baneful 


SHELLEY  L\  ITALY.  2^7 

prison,  to  be  sent  to  his  friend  Peacock.  Not 
an  instant's  doubt  has  Shelley  of  the  authenticity 
of  the  hateful  place  ;  he  is  not  a  critical  and 
sceptical  traveller  like  Goethe,  who  saw  nothing 
in  Tasso's  prison  but  an  ordinary  coal-cellar,  in 
which  he  was  assuredly  never  incarcerated,  and 
quotes  on  the  occasion  Luther's  famous  inkstain, 
which  is  renewed  from  time  to  time,  for  the 
satisfaction  of  credulous  tourists. 

From  Ferrara,  Shelley  proceeded  to  Bologna, 
where  he  arrived  on  the  8ta  November.  Here, 
Shelley  ventured  on  the  yet  untrodden  ground 
of  art-criticism.  Until  the  period  of  his  travels 
in  Italy,  he  had  been  indifferent  to  the  Fine  Arts, 
with  the  exception  of  Sculpture  ;  but  his  mind 
was  too  ardently  fixed  upon  the  search  after  the 
Beautiful,  to  admit  of  his  neglecting  to  pursue 
it  under  all  its  forms.  The  Italian  Museums  had 
awakened  in  him  that  insatiable  curiosity  which 
made  him  observe  in  painting  as  well  as  in 
statuary,  "the  laws  according  to  which  that  ideal 
beauty,  of  which  we  have  in  ourselves  a  perception 
so  intense  and  yet  so  obscure,  is  realised  in  out- 
ward forms."  He  was  not  an  amateur  by 
profession  ;  he  was  not  a  learned  connoisseur  ; 
but  he  possessed  what  is  worth  more  than 
•erudition  and  technical  knowledge,  that  is  to 
say,  natural  taste  and  love  of  the  beautiful,  which 
is  its  principle  and  its  rule.  He  felt  strongly  and 
keenly,  and  he  expressed  ardently  what  he  felt; 
in  his  descriptions  of  pictures  there  is  freshness 
and  grace  of  sentiment,  sincerity  and  truth  of 
impressions,  which  render  marvellously  the  effect 
of  the  work,  and  place  it,  so  to  speak,  before 
our  eyes.  In  the  tone,  the  keenness,  and  "the 
originality  of  his  criticisms,  he  approaches  the 
great  master  of  this  kind  of  writing,  our  own 
Diderot. 

The  two  painters  who  strike  him  most  in  that 


29S     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

wonderful  Bologna  gallery,  are  Correggio  and 
Guido.  He  admires  a  picture  representing  "  Four 
Saints/^  by  the  former,  '^of  exquisite  execution," 
and  especially  a  "  Beatified  Christ,  of  inexpres- 
sible beauty/'  which  gives  him  the  highest  idea 
of  the  painter's  genius.  Above  all,  he  admires 
the  vaporous  and  fluid  light  with  which  each 
seems  to  be  penetrated.  Like  Goethe,  he  is 
enamoured  of  the  divine  genius  of  Guido,  "  who 
ought  never  to  have  painted,"  he  says,  "  anything 
but  that  which  is  most  perfect  to  behold,  instead 
of  those  dreadfully  stupid  subjects  which  no 
amount  of  abuse  can  sufficiently  stigmatise.  On 
this  point  Shelley  thinks  with  Goethe,  and  would 
willingly  have  endorsed  the  saying  of  the  great 
German  pagan  :  "  Faith  has  resuscitated  the  arts, 
Superstition  has  laid  hold  on  them  and  killed  them 
afresh."  His  favourites  among  the  masterpieces 
of  Italian  Art  are  heathen  or  allegorical  subjects. 
He  remembers  with  delight  Guido's  "  Rape  of 
Proserpine,"  "in  which  Proserpine  casts  a  languish- 
ing, half-resigned  look  upon  the  flowers  which 
she  leaves  behind  her  in  the  fields  of  Enna."  He 
endeavours  to  convey  this  tender  impression  in 
verse.  Guido's  "  Victorious  Samson"  has,  to  his 
mind,  something  of  "  the  strength  and  elegance  '' 
of  the  Apollo;  the  picture  of  "Fortune  "  he  regards 
as  "  a  work  of  true  beauty."  He  also  admires 
the  "  Massacre  of  the  Innocents  "  and  "  The  Dying 
Christ,"  but  the  first  of  these  pictures  strikes  him 
as  a  feeble  rendering  of  so  horrible  a  subject  ; 
and  apropos  of  the  second,  although  "  very  fine," 
he  says  :  "  One  grows  tired,  whatever  may  be 
the  conception  and  the  execution  of  the  subject, 
of  seeing  that  agonised  and  monotonous  figure 
eternally  stereotyped  in  a  prescribed  attitude  of 
torture."  He  experiences  a  similar  feeling  on 
contemplating  Guercino's  "St.  Bruno,"  which  repre- 
sents to  him  the  sublime  of  mystical  horror.     He 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  299 

could    not     admire    the    mannered     and     forced 
method  of  Guercino, 

Amid  all  these  masterpieces,  Raffaelle's  ''  Saint 
Cecilia"  delighted  Shelley  most: 

You  forget  that  it  is  a  picture  as  you  look  at  it  :  and  yet 
it  is  most  unlike  any  of  those  things  which  we  call  reality 
It  is  of  the  inspired  and  ideal  kind,  and  seems  to  have  been 
conceived  and  executed  in  a  similar  state  of  feeling  to  that 
which  produced  among  the  ancients  those  perfect  specimens 
of  poetry  and  sculpture  which  are  the  baffling  models  of 
succeeding  generations.  There  is  a  unity  and  a  perfection 
in  it  of  an  incommunicable  kind.  The  central  tigure,  St. 
Cecilia,  seems  rapt  in  such  inspiration  as  produced  her  image 
in  the  poet's  mind  ;  her  deep,  dark,  eloquent  eyes  lifted  up  ; 
her  chestnut  hair  flung  back  from  her  forehead — she  holds 
an  organ  in  her  hands — her  countenance  as  it  were  calmed 
by  the  depth  of  its  passion  and  rapture,  and  penetrated 
throughout  with  the  warm  and  radiant  light  of  life.  She  is 
listening  to  the  music  of  heaven,  and,  as  I  imagine,  has  just 
ceased  to  sing,  for  the  four  figures  that  surround  her  evidently 
point,  by  their  attitudes,  towards  her  ;  particularly  St.  John, 
who  with  a  tender  yet  impassioned  gesture,  bends  his  counte- 
nance towards  her,  languid  with  the  depth  of  his  emotion.  At 
her  feet  lie  various  instruments  of  music,  broken  and  unstrung. 
Of  the  colouring  I  do  not  speak;  it  eclipses  Nature,  yet  it  has 
all  her  charm  and  softness. 

Remembering  Shelley's  extreme  admiration 
of  the  grace  and  charm  of  Raffaelle,  Corrcggio, 
and  Guido,  we  cannot  feel  surprise  at  his  verdict 
on  the  grand,  masculine,  and  severe  style  of 
Michael  Angelo,  which  he  criticises,  with  reference 
to  his  "Last  Judgment,"  and  estimates  the  painter 
as  the  "  Titus  Andronicus  "  of  his  art  : 

With  respect  to  Michael  Angelo,  I  dissent,  and  think 
with  astonishment  and  indignation  on  the  common  notion 
that  he  ecjuals,  and  in  some  respects  exceeds  Kaffaelle.  He 
seems  to  me  to  have  no  sense  of  moral  dignity  and  loveli- 
ness ;  and  the  energy  for  which  he  has  been  so  much 
praised,  appears  to  me  to  be  a  certain  rude,  external, 
mechanical  quality,  in  comparison  with  anything  possessed 
by  Raffaelle,  or  even  much  inferior  artists.  His  famous 
painting  in  the  Sixtine  Chapel  seems  to  me  deficient  in 
beaut)'  and  majesty,  both  in  the  conception  and  the  execution» 


300    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

He  has  been  called  the  Dante  of  painting  ;  but  if  we  find 
some  of  the  gross  and  strong  outlines  which  are  employed 
in  the  most  distasteful  passages  of  the  "Inferno,'  where  shall 
we  find  yoiir  Francesca — where  the  spirit  coming  over  the 
sea  in  a  boat,  like  Mars  rising  from  the  vapours  of  the 
horizon — where  Matilda  gathering  flowers,  and  all  the 
e.'iquisite  tenderness,  and  sensibility,  and  ideal  beauty,  in 
which  Dante  excelled  all  poets  except  Shakespeare  ? 

Shelley  applied  his  axioin,  sweet  and  strong, 
to  Art.  To  Shelley,  Michael  Angelo  seemed  the 
type  of  strength  or  horror  untempered  by  beauty  ; 
he  only  conceived  strength  either  in  contrast  or 
in  union  with  grace,  as  in  Leonardo  da  Vinci's 
"  Medusa,^'  which  inspired  liis  beautiful  lines  begin- 
ning: "Her  horror  and  her  beauty  are  divine.  .  .  ." 
There  is  one  passage  in  a  curious  pamphlet  by 
Shelley  on  the  Devi!,  wherein  he  tries  to 
account  for  his  marked  preference  for  painters 
and  poets  who  have  devoted  themselves  to  Beauty 
rather  than  to  Horror,  to  Grace  rather  than  to 
Strength  : 

Misery  and  injustice  contrive  to  produce  very  poetical 
effects,  because  the  excellence  of  poetry  consists  in  its 
awakening  the  sympathy  of  men,  which  among  persons 
influenced  by  an  abject  and  gloomy  superstition,  is  much 
more  easily  done  by  images  of  horror  than  of  beauty.  It 
often  requires  a  higher  degree  of  skill  in  a  poet  to  make 
beauty,  virtue,  and  harmony  poetical,  that  is,  to  give  them 
an  idealised  and  rhythmical  analogy  with  the  predominating 
emotions  of  his  readers — than  to  make  injustice,  deformity, 
and  discord  poetical.  There  are  fewer  RafTaelles  than 
Michael  Angeles  ;  better  verses  have  been  written  on  Hell 
than  Paradise.  How  few  read  the  "  Purgatorio"  or  the 
"Paradiso"  of  Dante,  in  comparison  of  those  who  know  the 
"Inferno"  well!  * 

Moreover,  Michael  Angelo  did  not  appear  to 
him  to  realise  equally  with  Raffaelle  the  ideal  of 

*  "  On  the  Devil  and  Devils,"  a  very  amusing  essay 
written  in  the  Lucianic  manner,  in  which  Shelley  criticises 
the  conflicting  opinions  on  the  nature  of  the  Devil,  hii 
attributes,  and  his  place  of  abode. 


SHELLEY  L\  ITALY.  301 

Greek  beauty,  which  is  Shelley's  standard  for  all 
the  conceptions  of  Art.  The  thought  of  the 
vanished  paintings  of  Greece,  of  the  mutilations 
suffered  by  the  masterpieces  of  modern  painters, 
either  from  the  Vandalism  of  "  restoration  "  or 
French  bayonets,  moves  him  to  gloomy  reflections 
on  the  fragility  and  mortality  of  that  fugitive  art. 

Sculpture  retains  its  freshness  for  twenty  centuries— the 
Apollo  and  the  Venus  are  as  they  were.  But  books  are 
perhaps  the  only  productions  of  man  coeval  with  the  human 
race.  Sophocles  and  Shakespeare  can  be  produced  and 
reproduced  for  ever.  But  the  paintings  of  Zcuxis  and  Apelles 
are  no  more,  and  perhaps  they  bore  the  same  relation  to 
Homer  and  /Kschylus,  that  those  of  Guido  and  Raffaelle  bear 
to  Dante  and  Petrarch. 

From  Bologna,  Shelley  travels  slowly  to  Rome, 
by  way  of  Rimini,  Fano,  Foligno,  and  the  Via 
Flaminia.  He  follows  the  course  of  the  Metaurus, 
the  banks  of  which  were  the  scene  of  the  defeat  of 
AsdrubaJ,  and  perceives  with  astonishment  that 
the  sides  of  the  mountain  through  whicli  the  road 
is  carried,  yet  bear  marks  of  the  chisels  of  the 
legionaries  of  Rome.  At  the  romantically  situated 
town  of  Spoleto,  he  is  full  of  admiration  for  a 
colossal  aqueduct,  and  a  castle  built  by  Belisarius 
or  N arses  ;  at  Terni,  the  celebrated  cataract  of 
Velino  appears  to  him,  after  the  glaciers  of 
Montanvert  and  the  source  of  the  Arveiron,  one 
of  the  grandest  spectacles  in  the  world.  At 
length  he  reaches  the  famous  Campagna  di  Roma  ; 
he  sees  the  Apenjiines  on  the  one  hand,  on  the 
other  St.  Peter's  and  Rome;  "Rome,  the  capital  of 
a  vanished  world  !  " 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

SHELLEY       IN       ITALY — ROME       AND      NAPLES  — 
1818-1819. 

Shelley  reached  Rome  on  November  20th,  1S18; 
on  that  occasion  he  did  little  more  than  glance  at 
the  Eternal  City,  but  even  the  superficial  inspection 
of  the  miracles  of  ancient  Art  produced  on  him  an 
impression  that  exceeded,  he  says,  anything  he 
had  ever  experienced  in  his  travels.  He  saw  little 
of  modern  Rome,  visiting  by  preference  the  ruins 
of  the  Coliseum,  which  appeared  to  him  as  sublime 
and  as  impressive  in  its  present  state,  as  when  it 
was  encrusted  with  Dorian  marble,  and  ornamented 
with  columns  of  Egyptian  granite;  and  the  Arch 
of  Titus,  or  rather  of  Constantine,  "the  Christian 
reptile,  who  had  crawled  through  the  blood  of  his 
murdered  family  to  the  supreme  power."  He 
wandered  in  the  desert  of  the  ruins  of  the  Forum, 
strewn  with  the  wrecks  of  temples  which  a  great 
nation  once  dedicated  to  the  abstractions  of  the 
mind  ;  he  rested  with  pleasure  on  the  green  slope 
of  earth  beneath  the  pyramidal  tomb  of  Cestius 
which  is  known  as  the  English  burial-place,  and 
where  his  own  ashes  were  soon  to  rest. 

''  It  is,  I  think,  the  most  beautiful  and  solemn  cemetery 
I  ever  beheld,"  he  writes,  as  though  with  a  presentiment. 
"  To  see  the  sun  shining  on  its  bright  grass — fresh  when  we 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  303 

-first  visited,  with  the  autumnal  dews — and  hear  the  whisper- 
ing of  the  wind  among  the  leaves  of  the  trees  which  have 
overgrown  the  tomb  of  Cestius,  and  the  soil  which  is  stirring 
in  the  sun-warm  earth,  and  to  mark  the  tombs,  mostly  of 
women  and  young  people  who  were  buried  there,  one  might, 
if  one  were  to  die,  desire  the  sleep  they  seem  to  sleep.  Such 
is  the  human  mind  ;  and  so  it  peoples  with  its  wishes  vacancy 
and  oblivion." 

He  was  deeply  impressed  by  the  sight  of  the 
Coliseum,  and  here,  while  Mary  sketched  the 
ruined  stairs,  and  little  William  sported  beside  her, 
he  began  that  historical  and  philosophical  romance 
of  which  the  Coliseum  was  to  be  the  subject  and 
the  title.* 

After  a  week  given  to  the  delights  of  Rome, 
Shelley  set  out  for  Naples,  where  he  purposed 
passing  the  beginning  of  the  winter.  The  frantic 
terrors  of  a  Lombard  merchant  and  a  Calabrian 
priest,  supplied  the  comedy  of  the  journey.  They 
were  in  mortal  fear  of  being  assassinated  when 
travelling,  before  daylight,  through  the  Pontine 
Marshes,  and  trembled  at  the  pistol  and  the 
intrepidity  of  the  poet.  The  first  incident  he 
witnessed  on  arriving  at  Naples  was  an  assassina- 
tion, but  the  beauties  of  Nature,  and  the  glorious 
marvels  of  Art,  soon  enabled  him  to  forget  the 
hideousness  and  degradation  of  man. 

He  writes  to  Peacock  (December  22nd)  : 

We  have  a  lodging  divided  from  the  sea  by  the  royal 
gardens,  and  from  our  windows  we  see  perpetually  the  blue 
waters  of  the  bay  for  ever  changing,  yet  for  ever  the  same,  and 
encompassed  by  the  mountainous  island  of  Capri,  the  lofty 
peaks  which  overhang  Salerno,  and  the  woody  hill  of  Posilipo, 
whose  promontories  hide  from  us  Misenum,  and  the  lofty  isle 
of  Inarime  (Ischia),  which,  with  its  divided  summit,  forms  the 
opposite  horn  of  the  bay.  From  the  pleasant  walks  of  the 
garden  we  see  Vesuvius  ;  a  smoke  by  day  and  a  fire  by  night  is 
seen  upon  its  summit,  and  the  glassy  sea  often  reflects  its  light 

*  A  remarkable  fragment  of  this  tale,  in  which  Shelley 
■draws  his  own  portrait,  has  been  published  by  Mr.  Forman. 


304    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

or  shadow.  The  climate  is  delicious.  We  sit  without  a  fire 
with  the  windows  open,  and  have  almost  all  the  productions^ 
of  an  English  sumimer.  The  weather  is  usually  like  what 
Wordsworih  calls  "  the  ^rst  fine  day  of  March,"  sometimes, 
very  much  warmer,  though  perhaps  it  wants  that  "  each 
minute  sweeter  than  before,"  which  gives  an  intoxicating 
sweetness  to  the  awakening  of  the  earth  from  its  winter's 
sleep  in  England. 

Instead  of  guide-books,  they  read  "  Corinne," 
Titus  Livius^  and  Winckelmann. 

The  first  excursions  were  to  Baias  and 
Vesuvius.  On  December  8th,  Shelley  visited  with 
lively  emotion  those  classic  spots  called  by  Virgil 
Puteolana  et  Cuiiiana  regna  :  Posilipo  ;  the  Bay  of 
Pozzuoli,  with  its  lofty  rocks  and  craggy  islets,  its 
arches  and  portals  of  precipice,  and  its  enormous 
caverns,  Avhich  echoed  faintly  with  the  murmur  of 
the  languid  tide  ;  the  Mare  Morto  ;  the  Avernus 
and  cavern  of  the  Sibyl  ;  in  fact,  all  the  scenery  of 
the  sixth  book  of  the  "^neid."  He  was,  however^ 
somewhat  disappointed  to  see  how  these  places 
had  fallen  from  their  mythological  and  Virgilian 
beauty  ;  the  Elysian  Fields  having  become  a  vine- 
yard, the  Avernus  having  lost  its  deadly  and 
pestilential  vapours,  and  the  miserly  Acheron, 
under  the  name  of  Fusaro,  being  now  employed 
for  soaking  flax,  and  forming  an  excellent  oyster- 
bed.  The  land  is  covered  with  tombs  and  ruins, 
the  whole  attraction  of  the  scenery  being  due  to 
the  effect  of  sea  and  sky;  "the  colours  of  the 
water  and  the  air  breathe  over  all  things  here  the 
radiance  of  their  own  beauty.''  Nevertheless,  he 
admires  the  cavern  of  the  Sibyl  (not  Virgil's  Sibyl) 
on  Lake  Avernus,  the  ruins  of  the  temple  of  Pluto, 
which  are  reflected  in  the  windless  mirror  of  a  lovely 
basin  of  water,  surrounded  by  dark  and  profoundly 
solitary  hills  ;  and  the  broken  columns  of  a  temple 
to  Serapis  at  Pozzuoli. 

Vesuvius  is,  next  to  the  glaciers,  the  most 
imposing  exhibition  of  the  energies  of  Nature  that 


SHELLEY  IN  LTALY.  305 

Shelley  had  seen.  We  must  quote  his  exquisite 
description,  which  is  worthy  of  a  place  beside 
those  of  Goethe  and  Chateaubriand  : 

It  has  not  the  immeasurable  greatness,  the  overpowering 
magnificence,  nor  above  all,  the  radiant  beauty  of  the  glaciers, 
but  it  has  all  their  character  of  tremendous  and  irresistible 
strength.  From  Résina  to  the  hermitage  you  wind  up  the 
mountain,  and  cross  a  vast  stream  of  hardened  lava,  which 
is  an  actual  image  of  the  waves  of  the  sea,  changed  into 
hard  black  stone  by  enchantment.  The  lines  of  the  boiling 
flood  seem  to  hang  in  the  air,  and  it  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  the  billows  which  seem  hurrying  down  upon  you  are  not 
actually  in  motion.  This  plain  was  once  a  sea  of  liquid  fire. 
From  the  hermitage  we  crossed  another  vast  stream  of  lava, 
and  then  went  on  foot  up  the  cone — this  is  the  only  part  of 
the  ascent  in  which  there  is  any  difficulty,  and  that  difficulty 
has  been  much  exaggerated.  It  is  composed  of  rocks  of 
lava,  and  declivities  of  ashes  ;  by  ascending  the  former  and 
•descending  the  latter,  there  is  very  little  fatigue.  On  the 
summit  is  a  kind  of  irregular  plain,  the  most  horrible  chaos 
that  can  be  imagined,  riven  into  ghastly  chasms,  and  heaped 
up  with  tumuli  of  great  stones  and  cinders,  and  enormous 
rocks  blackened  and  calcined,  which  had  been  thrown  from 
the  volcano  upon  one  another  in  terrible  confusion.  In  the 
midst  stands  the  conical  hill  from  which  volumes  of  smoke 
and  the  fountains  of  liquid  fire  are  rolled  forth  for  ever. 
The  mountain  is  at  present  in  a  slight  state  of  eruption  ;  and 
a  thick,' heavy  white  smoke  is  perpetually  rolled  out,  inter- 
rupted by  enormous  columns  of  an  impenetrable  black 
bituminous  vapour,  which  is  hurled  up,  fold  after  fold,  into 
the  sky  with  a  deep  hollow  sound,  and  fiery  stones  are 
rained  down  from  its  blackness,  and  a  black  shower  of 
ashes  fell  even  where  we  sat.  The  lava,  like  the  glacier, 
■creeps  on  perpetually,  with  a  crackling  sound  as  of  sup- 
pressed fire.  There  are  several  springs  of  lava  ;  and  in  one 
place  it  gushes  precipitously  over  a  high  crag,  rolling  down 
the  half-molten  rocks,  and  its  own  overhanging  waves  ;  a 
cataract  of  quivering  fire.  We  approached  the  extremity 
of  one  of  the  rivers  of  lava  ;  it  is  about  twenty  feet  in 
breadth  and  ten  in  height  ;  and  as  the  inclined  plane  was 
not  rapid,  its  motion  was  very  slow.  We  saw  the  masses  of 
its  dark  exterior  surface  detach  themselves  as  it  moved,  and 
betray  the  depth  of  the  liquid  flame.  In  the  day  the  fire  is 
but  slightly  seen  ;  you  only  observe  a  tremulous  motion  in 
the  air,  and  streams  and  fountains  of  white  sulphurous 
smoke. 


3o6    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

At  length  we  saw  the  sun  sink  between  Capreœ  and 
Inarime,  and,  as  the  darkness  increased,  the  effect  of  the  fire 
became  more  beautiful.  We  were,  as  it  were,  surrounded  by- 
streams  and  cataracts  of  the  red  and  radiant  fire  ;  and  in  the 
midst,  from  the  column  of  bituminous  smoke  shot  up  into  the 
air,  fell  the  vast  masses  of  rock,  white  with  the  light  of  their 
intense  heat,  leaving  behind  them,  through  the  dark  vapour, 
trains  of  splendour.  We  descended  by  torchlight,  and  I 
should  have  enjoyed  the  scenery  on  my  return,  but  they  con- 
ducted me,  I  know  not  how,  to  the  hermitage  in  a  state  of 
intense  bodily  suffering,  the  worst  effect  of  which  was  spoiling 
the  pleasure  of  Mary  and  Claire.  Our  guides  on  the  occasion 
were  complete  savages.  You  have  no  idea  of  the  horrible 
cries  which  they  suddenly  utter,  no  one  knows  why  ;  the 
clamour,  the  vociferation,  the  tumult.  Claire,  in  her  palan- 
quin, suffered  most  from  it  ;  and  when  I  had  gone  on  before, 
they  threatened  to  leave  her  in  the  middle  of  the  road,  which 
they  would  have  done  had  not  my  Italian  servant  promised 
them  a  beating,  after  which  they  became  quiet.  Nothing, 
however,  can  be  more  picturesque  than  the  gestures  and  the 
physiognomies  of  these  savage  people.  And  when,  in  the 
darkness  of  night,  they  unexpectedly  begin  to  sing  in  chorus 
some  fragments  of  their  wild  but  sweet  national  music,  the 
effect  is  exceedingly  fine. 

In  the  intervals  between  these  excursions 
Shelley  visited  the  museums  of  Naples,  more 
particularly  the  sculpture  galleries,  for  the  collec- 
tion of  paintings,  says  he,  "is  sufficiently  miser- 
able," *  but  :  "  Such  statues  !  There  is  a  Venus,t 
an  ideal  shape  of  the  most  winning  loveliness;  a 
Bacchus  more  sublime  than  any  living  being;  J  a 
Satyr,  making  love  to  a  youth,  in  which  the  living 
expression  of  the  sculpture,  and  the  inconceivable 
beauty  of  the  form  of  the  youth,  overcome  one's 
repugnance  to  the  subject." 

*  Shelley  excepted  from  this  censure  the  original  studies 
by  Michael  Angelo  of  the  "  Day  of  Judgment,"  a  few 
pictures  by  Raffaelle  and  his  pupils,  a  "  Danaë  "  of  Titian's, 
a  "  Maddelena  "  by  Guido,  and  some  excellent  pictures,  in 
point  of  execution,  by  Annibale  Caracci  ;  ''  none  others," 
says  he,  "worth  a  second  look." 

t  Most  likely  the  Venus  of  Capua,  attributed  to  Praxiteles^ 
and  the  original,  it  is  said,  of  the  Venus  of  Milo. 

;J:  Probably  the  Hermaphrodite  Bacchus. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY. 


307 


We  can  easily  imagine  how  deep  an  impression 
on  Shelley  the  ruins  of  Pompeii  must  have 
produced  ;  he  was  astonished,  having  no  conception 
that  anything  so  perfect  could  yet  remain.  From 
the  contemplation  of  its  tombs,  its  stones,  and  its 
paintings,  his  mind  turned  to  the  consideration  of 
the  human  life  which  once  animated  this  desert  of 
ruins  ;  by  the  aid  of  its  monuments  he  reconstructs 
the  spirit  and  the  soul  of  the  ancient  city  He 
writes  ; 

The  houses  have  only  one  storey,  and  the  apartments 
though  not  large,  are  very  lofty.  A  great  advantage  results 
from  this,  wholly  unknown  in  our  cities.  The  public  build- 
ings, whose  ruins  are  now  forests,  as  it  were,  of  white  fluted 
columns,  and  which  then  supported  entablatures  loaded  with 
sculptures,  were  then  seen  on  all  sides  over  the  roofs  of  the 
houses.  This  was  the  excellence  of  the  ancients.  Their 
private  expenses  were  comparatively  moderate  ;  the  dwelling 
of  one  of  the  chief  senators  of  Pompeii  is  elegant  indeed,  and 
adorned  with  most  beautiful  specimens  of  Art,  but  small. 
But  their  public  buildings  are  everywhere  marked  by  the 
bold  and  grand  designs  of  an  unsparing  magnificence.  In 
the  little  town  of  Pompeii  (it  contained  about  twenty  thousand 
inhabitants)  it  is  wonderful  to  see  the  number  and  the  gran- 
deur of  their  public  buildings.  Another  advantage,  too,  is 
that  in  the  present  case  the  glorious  scenery  around  is  not 
shut  out,  and  that,  unlike  the  inhabitants  of  the  Cimmerian 
ravines  of  modern  cities,  the  ancient  Pompeians  could  con- 
template the  clouds  and  the  lamps  of  Heaven  ;  could  see  the 
moon  rise  high  behind  Vesuvius,  and  the  sun  set  in  the  sea, 
tremulous  with  an  atmosphere  of  golden  vapour,  between 
Inarime  and  Misenum.  .  .  . 

At  the  upper  end,  supported  on  an  elevated  platform, 
stands  the  Temple  of  Jupiter.  Under  the  colonnade  of  its 
portico  we  sate,  and  pulled  out  our  oranges,  and  figs,  and 
bread,  and  medlars  ("sorry  fare,"  you  will  say),  and  rested 
to  eat.  Here  was  a  magnificent  spectacle.  Above  and 
between  the  multitudinous  shafis  of  the  sun-shining  columns 
was  seen  the  sea,  reflecting  the  purple  heaven  of  noon  above 
it,  and  supporting,  as  it  were,  on  its  line  the  dark,  lofty 
mountains  of  Sorrento,  of  a  blue  inexpressibly  deep,  and 
tinged  towards  their  summits  with  streaks  of  new-fallen 
snow.  Between  was  one  small  green  island  ;  to  the  right 
were  Capreee,  Inarime,  Prochyta  (Procida),  and  iMisenum. 
Behind  was  the  single  summit  of  Vesuvius,  rolling  forth 

X    2 


3o8    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

volumes  of  thick  white  smoke,  whose  foam-like  colmTin  was 
sometimes  darted  into  the  clear  dark  sky,  and  fell  in 
little  streaks  along  the  wind.  Between  Vesuvius  and  the 
nearer  mountains,  as  through  a  chasm,  was  seen  the  main 
line  of  the  loftiest  Apennines,  to  the  east.  The  day  was 
radiant  and  warm.  Every  now  and  then  we  heard  the 
subterranean  thunder  of  Vesuvius  ;  its  distant  deep  peals 
seemed  to  shake  the  very  air  and  light  of  day,  which  inter- 
penetrated our  frames  with  the  sullen  and  tremendous 
sound.  This  scene  was  what  the  Greeks  beheld  (Pompeii 
was,  you  know,  a  Greek  city).  They  lived  in  harmony  with 
Nature,  and  the  interstices  of  their  incomparable  columns 
were  portals,  as  it  were,  to  admit  the  spirit  of  beauty  which 
animates  this  glorious  universe  to  visit  those  whom  it 
inspired.  If  such  is  Pompeii,  what  was  Athens  ?  What 
scene  was  exhibited  from  the  Acropolis,  the  Parthenon,  and 
the  temples  of  Hercules,  and  Theseus,  and  the  Winds  ; 
the  islands  of  the  yEgean  Sea,  the  mountains  of  Argolis,  and 
the  peaks  of  Pindus  and  Olympus,  and  the  darkness  of  the 
Boeotian  forests  interspersed  ? 

Shelley  draws  likewise  much  solemn  instruction 
from  the  tombs  which  rise  on  either  side  of  the 
Consular  road,  and  which  resemble  "not  so  much 
hiding-places  for  that  which  must  decay,  as  volup- 
tuous chambers  for  immortal  spirits.''^ 

"These  tombs,"  he  writes,  "are  the  most  impressive 
things  of  all.  The  wild  woods  surround  them  on  either 
side,  and  along  the  broad  stones  of  the  paved  road  which 
divides  them  you  hear  the  late  leaves  of  autumn  shiver  and 
rustle  in  the  streain  of  the  inconstant  wind,  as  it  were  like 
the  steps  of  ghosts.  The  radiance  and  magnificence  of 
these  dwellings  of  the  dead,  the  white  freshness  of  the 
scarcely  finished  marble,  the  impassioned  or  imaginative 
life  of  the  figures  which  adorn  them,  contrast  strangely  with 
the  simplicity  of  the  houses  of  those  who  were  living  when 
Vesuvius  overwhelmed  them. 

*'  I  have  forgotten  the  amphitheatre,  which  is  of  great 
magnitude,  though  much  inferior  to  the  Coliseum.  I  now 
understand  why  the  Greeks  were  such  great  poets  ;  and, 
above  all,  I  can  account,  it  seems  to  me,  for  the  harmony, 
the  unity,  the  perfection,  the  uniform  excellence  of  all  their 
works  of  Art.  They  lived  in  a  perpetual  commerce  with 
external  Nature,  and  nourished  themselves  upon  the  spirit  of 
its  forms.  Their  theatres  were  all  open  to  the  mountains 
and  the  sky.  Their  columns,  the  ideal  types  of  a  sacred 
forest,  with  its  roof  of  interwoven  tracery,  admitted  the  light 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  309 

and  wind  ;  the  odour  and  the  freshness  of  the  country  pene- 
trated the  cities.  Their  temples  were  mostly  upaithric  ;  and 
the  flying  clouds,  the  stars,  or  the  deep  sky,  were  seen 
above.  Oh,  but  for  that  series  of  wretched  wars,  which 
terminated  in  the  Roman  conquest  of  the  world  ;  but  for  the 
Christian  religion,  which  put  the  finishing  strokes  on  the 
ancient  system  ;  but  for  those  changes  that  conducted 
Athens  to  its  ruin,  to  what  an  eminence  might  not  humanity 
have  arrived  !  " 

Under  the  stress  of  such  emotions  as  these,  and 
the  influence  of  a  ch'mate  to  which  he  was  so 
unaccustomed,  Shelley's  strength  was  soon  spent. 
He  felt  himself  unable  to  follow  up  his  poetical 
enterprises.  He  writes  in  his  letter  to  Peacock  of 
January  26th,  1819:  "Oh,  if  I  had  health,  and 
strength,  and  equal  spirits,  what  boundless  intel- 
lectual improvement  might  I  not  gather  in  this 
wonderful  country  !  "  He  writes  but  little  ;  and 
while  completing  the  first  act  of  "Prometheus,"  con- 
ceives the  plan  of  a  great  moral  and  political  work, 
in  which  he  will  embody  the  discoveries  of  all  ages, 
and  endeavour  to  harmonise  the  contending  creeds 
by  which  mankind  has  been  ruled.  His  restless 
thoughts,  beneath  the  fiery  sky  of  Naples,  depress 
and  crush  him  ;  he  realises  with  despair  the  im- 
potence of  his  efforts  and  of  his  dreams  ;  he  falls 
into  a  mental  and  physical  lassitude  which  is  all 
the  harder  to  bear  because  he  ''finds  not  any 
heart  to  share  in  his  emotion."  It  was  at  this 
epoch  that  he  wrote  those  poems,  filled  with  a 
deep  and  intense  melancholy,  in  which  he  asks 
from  poetry  consolation  and  the  power  to  forget  ; 
such  as  the  "  Lines  on  a  Faded  Violet,''  the 
despairing  "  Sonnet,"  in  \vhich,  recalling  the  en- 
thusiasm with  which  he  had  attempted  to  lift  "  the 
painted  veil  called  Life,"  and  his  disappointments, 
having  found  none  to  love,  nothing  earthly  capable 
of  satisfying  him,  he  compares  himself  to 

A  splendour  among  shadows,  a  bright  blot 
Upon  this  gloomy  scene,  a  Spirit  that  strove 
For  truth,  and,  like  the  Preacher,  found  it  not. 


3IO    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

But  above  all,  we  must  read  the  "  Stanzas  written 
in  dejection  near  Naples/'  if  we  would  form  a  just 
idea  of  Shelley's  depression  and  discouragement  at 
this  period.  With  Shelley,  however,  despair  was 
never  bitter  ;  it  is  always  mingled  with  resignation 
and  calm  ;  there  is  a  smile  even  in  his  tears  ;  he 
neither  curses  nor  hates.  He  has  no  anger  against 
Destiny  who  has  poured  out  for  him  so  bitter  a 
cup  ;  he  finds  a  charm  even  in  his  melancholy,  and 
like  a  tired  child  he  could  lie  down  and  wait  till 
deathlike  sleep  might  steal  upon  his  senses  ;  he 
will  still  bear  his  life  of  anguish  until  he  feels  his 
cheek  grow  cold  in  the  warm  air,  until  he  hears 
the  sea  breathe  o'er  his  dying  brain  its  last 
monotony.  One  cannot  refrain,  when  reading  this 
heart-rending  poem,  from  thinking  of  Christ's 
agony  in  the  Garden  of  Olives.  Shelley  finds  con- 
solation in  the  idea  that  mankind  will  lament  him, 
"  for  I  am  one,"  he  says,  "  whom  men  love  not, 
and  yet  regret;"  and  where  shall  we  find  words 
more  touching  than  these  of  the  poet-lover  of 
humanity  who  pardons  his  fellows  for  having  been 
indifferent  to  him  during  life,  because  he  hopes 
that  they  will  regret  him  after  death  ?  It  is  as 
beautiful  as  the  cry  of  Jesus:  "Forgive  them. 
Father  !  they  know  not  what  they  do  !  " 

These  Neapolitan  "  Stanzas  "  are  to  be  com- 
pared only  with  the  poem  entitled  "  Misery," 
which  was  inspired  by  similar  sentiments.  In  a 
fragment  written  earlier  called  "  Death,"  he  draws 
Misery  as  seated  near  an  open  grave,  and  he  calls 
upon  his  "sweetest  friend,"  to  dry  her  tears  and 
be  consoled  ;  now  he  takes  up  and  develops  the 
same  subject.  Misery,  here,  is  not  only  his 
"  sweetest  friend,"  but  his  sister,  his  beloved,  whom 
he  invites  to  "  the  bridal  bed,  beneath  the  grave," 
to  caresses  and  "  dreadful  transports,"  which  will 
fade  away  like  a  vapour  in  the  sleep  that  lasts  for 
ever. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  311 

Shelley  concealed  with  care  these  effusions  from 
"her  who  shared  his  work  and  pleasure  ;  yet  in  spite 
of  himself  they  revealed  themselves.  He  reproached 
himself  for  thus  betraying  the  discontent  and  sad- 
ness of  his  soul,  and  so  unjustly  wounding  the 
heart  of  his  beloved  Mary,  who  only,  as  he  said, 
would  have  had  the  right  of  complaining  that  she 
had  not  been  able  to  extinguish  in  him  even  the 
faculty  of  describing  sorrow.  Mary,  however,  did 
not  complain  ;  but  she  suffered,  and  guessed  at  the 
secret  wound  her  poet  hid  from  her.  "  There  is 
one,"  she  writes  in  her  "  Biographical  Notes,"  "  who 
looks  back  with  unspeakable  regret  and  gnawing 
remorse  to  such  periods,  fancying  that  had  one 
been  more  alive  to  the  nature  of  his  feelings,  and 
more  attentive  to  soothe  them,  such  would  not 
have  existed  ;  and  yet,  enjoying  as  he  seemed  to 
enjoy,  the  sweet  influences  of  earth  and  sky,  it  was 
difficult  to  believe  that  his  melancholy  was 
produced  by  other  causes  than  the  continual 
sufferings  which  made  of  him  a  martyr.'^ 

The  deep  dejection  and  despair  ;  words  so 
precise  as  those  in  the  third  strophe  of  the 
^'  Stanzas  :  " 

Alas  !  I  have  nor  hope  nor  health, 

Nor  peace  within,  nor  calm  around,  .  .  • 

.  .  .  Nor  fame,  .  .  .  nor  love,  .  .  . 

would  be  difficult  to  explain,  as  we  have  already 
insinuated,  without  taking  into  account  some 
extraordinary  moral  cause,  such  as  that  to  which 
Shelley  himself  attributes  them  in  the  narrative 
given  by  Mcdwin  of  his  connection  with  the 
beautiful  unknown  lady  who  followed  him  to 
Naples,  and  there  died. 

After  having  visited  the  Lago  d'Agniano,  and 
the  notorious  Grotto  del  Cane,  where  Shelley 
would  not  allow  the  tortures  of  the  unfortunate 
dogs  when   exposed  to  the  fatal  vapours   of  the 


3T2     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

cave  to  be  exhibited  before  him  ;  Salerno  and 
its  magnificent  scenery  ;  Paestum  with  its  sub- 
lime colonnades  and  ruined  temples,  which  ap- 
peared to  him  "  as  in  the  shadow  of  some  half- 
remembered  dream,"  the  poet  left  Naples  at  the 
end  of  February,  1819,  to  return  to  Rome. 

He  travelled  slowly,  resting  one  day  at  Mola 
di  Gaeta,  at  the  inn  called  the  "  Villa  di  Cicerone," 
from  being  built  on  the  ruins  of  the  ancient  villa, 
in  the  midst  of  orange  and  citron  groves  ;  and 
at  Terracina,  where  he  admired  the  high  conical 
crags,  the  Anxur  rocks  sung  by  Horace.  At 
Albano  he  arrived  again  in  sight  of  Rome  : 
"  Arches  after  arches  in  unending  lines  stretching 
across  the  uninhabited  wilderness,  the  blue  de- 
fined line  of  the  mountains  seen  between  them  > 
masses  of  nameless  ruin  standing  like  rocks  out 
of  the  plain  ;  and  the  plain  itself,  with  its 
billowy  and  unequal  surface,  announced  the 
neighbourhood  of  Rome." 

At  Rome,  Shelley's  first  enthusiasm  for  the 
grand  ruins  of  that  vast  necropolis  awoke  anew. 
He  was  never  tired  of  revisiting  the  Coliseum^ 
the  monuments  of  the  Forum,  the  colossal  statues 
of  Castor  and  Pollux,  the  Arch  of  Constantine 
of  which  the  gigantic  bas-reliefs,  "  expressing 
that  mixture  of  force  and  crime  which  is  called 
a  Triumph,"  gave  him  the  idea  of  his  poem,  the 
"Triumph  of  Life,"  which  death  interrupted.. 
But  the  ruins  which  he  takes  most  pleasure  in 
describing,  because  they  are  daily  the  witnesses 
of  his  thought,  and  in  some  measure  the  sources 
of  his  inspiration,  are  the  Thermae  of  Caracalla. 
It  was  here  that  he  composed  the  greater  part 
of  the  ''  Prometheus  Unbound,"  "  among  the 
flowery  lawns,  the  copses  of  odorously  blossom- 
ing trees  which  clothe  the  tortuous  labyrinths 
of  this  immense  platform,  and  the  arches  sus- 
pended in  mid-air  which  give  vertigo." 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  313 

Modern  Rome  was  far  from  arousing  in 
Shelley  the  same  interest  as  ancient  Rome.  He 
would  have  seen  modern  Italy  vanish  without 
any  great  regret  ;  he  was  always  painfully  struck 
with  the  contrast  between  the  moral  degra- 
dation of  the  people,  and  the  glorious  beauty 
of  Nature  and  Art.  He  could  not  endure  to 
see  St.  Peter's,  because  of  the  fettered  convicts 
in  parti-coloured  clothes  who  stand  in  the  square, 
hoeing  out  the  weeds  that  grow  between  the 
stones  of  the  pavement  : 

Near  them,  sit  or  saunter  groups  of  soldiers  armed  with 
loaded  muskets.  The  iron  discord  of  those  innumerable 
chains  clanks  up  with  the  sonorous  air  and  produces,  con- 
trasted with  the  musical  splashing  of  the  fountains,  and  the 
deep  azure  beauty  of  the  sky,  and  the  magnificence  of  the 
architecture  around,  a  conflict  of  sensations  allied  to  madness. 

To  the  sinister  clank  of  chains  must  be  added 
the  noisy  acclamations  of  "Viva  Napoleone  !  " 
which  greeted  the  Emperor  of  Austria  and  Maria 
Louisa.  Such  are  men  in  fair  Italy  !  Idiots 
and  slaves  !  However,  the  Romans  pleased  him 
much,  especially  the  womien,  whom  he  excepts 
from  the  prejudiced  and  unfavourable  judgment 
he  passes  on  the  Italians  : 

The  Roman  women,  though  totally  devoid  of  every  kind 
of  information,  or  culture  of  the  imagination,  or  affections, 
or  understanding  —  and  in  this  respect  a  kind  of  gentle 
savages  —  yet  contrive  to  be  interesting.  Their  extreme 
innocence  and  iiaivetc,  the  freedom  and  gentleness  of  their 
manners,  the  total  absence  of  affectation,  make  an  inter- 
course with  them  very  like  an  intercourse  with  unconupted. 
children,  whom  they  resemble  in  loveliness  as  well  as  sim- 
plicity. I  have  seen  two  women  in  society  here  of  the  highest 
beauty  ;  their  brows  and  lips,  and  <he  moulding  of  the  face 
modeilcd  with  sculptural  exactness,  and  the  dark  luxuriance 
of  their  hair,  floating  over  their  fine  complexions — and  the 
lips— you  must  hear  the  commonplaces  which  escape  from 
them  before  they  cease  to  be  dangerous.  The  only  inferior 
part  are  the  eyes,  which,  though  good  and  gentle,  want  the 


314    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

mazy  depth  of  colour  behind  colour  with  which  the  intellecttial 
women  of  England  and  of  Germany  entangle  the  heart  in 
soul-inwoven  labyrinths. 

The  feeling  of  contempt  which  modern  Italy 
inspired  in  Shelley,  reveals  itself  in  his  letters 
by  the  curious  criticisms  he  passed  on  the  monu- 
ments of  Christian  and  Papal  Art.  Thus  St. 
Peter's  appears  to  him  much  inferior  in  archi- 
tectural beauty  to  St.  Paul's  ;  while  "  internally 
it  exhibits  littleness  on  a  large  scale,  and  is  in 
•every  respect  opposed  to  antique  taste."  *  On 
the  other  hand  the  Pantheon,  though  not  a  fourth 
part  of  the  size,  is  "  the  visible  image  of  the 
universe."  The  idea  of  magnitude  is  swallowed 
up  and  lost  in  the  perfection  of  its  proportions, 
as  when  you  regard  the  unmeasured  dome  of 
heaven. 

The  ceremonies  of  Holy  Week,  celebrated  in 
the  year  1818  with  more  than  ordinary  pomp 
on  account  of  the  presence  of  the  Emperor  of 
Austria,  were  matters  of  indifference  to  Shelley. 
Nevertheless,  on  his  way  home  one  day  from  a 
visit  to  the  Coliseum,  he  was  present  at  the  Wash- 
ing of  the  Pilgrims'  Feet,  and  also  the  distribution 
of  macaroni  by  the  Cardinals  to  the  hungry 
beggars.  On  Easter  Sunday  he  admired  the 
illuminations  of  the  Cupola  and  the  fireworks  at 
the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo,  which  exhibited  an 
additional  set-piece  representing  the  Mausoleum 
of  Hadrian. 

Shelley  at  Rome,  as  elsewhere,  went  very 
little  into  society.  The  Italians  had  no  attrac- 
tion for  him  ;  and  in  Mary  Shelley's  letters 
but  one  single  Italian  lady  is  mentioned,  the 
Signora  Marianna  Dionigi,  painter,  antiquary,  and 
authoress,  at  whose  conversazioni  all  the  authors 

*  He  admits,  however,  that  its  colonnade,  its  palace-like 
facade,  and  the  rest  of  the  Square  form  an  "  architectural 
combination  unequalled  in  the  world." 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  315 

and  artists  were  to  be  found.  On  the  other 
hand  Shelley  met  some  distinguished  fellow- 
countrymen  at  Rome  such  as  Lord  Guilford,  Sir 
William  Drummond,  whom  he  esteemed  highly 
as  a  thinker,  and  Miss  Curran,  daughter  of  the 
Irish  Master  of  the  Rolls  ;  this  lady  had  some 
skill  in  painting,  and  becoming  a  friend  of  the 
family,  attempted  the  portraits  of  Shelley,  of 
Mary,  of  Claire,  and  of  little  William  (May, 
18T9). 

Rome  was  to  be  for  Shelley,  as  he  himself 
called  it,  both  Paradise  and  the  tomb. 

The  last  moments  of  his  stay  in  the  Eternal 
City  were  profoundly  saddened  by  the  death  of 
his  beloved  little  William,  who  was  carried  off 
after  an  illness  of  a  few  days  (June  7th).  Shelley 
had  watched  during  sixty  hours  of  agony  with- 
out closing  his  eyes.  "We  suffered  terrible 
grief  when  at  Rome,^'  writes  Mary,  "  with  re- 
gard to  our  eldest  boy,  who,  for  his  beauty  and 
promise,  was  our  hearts'  idol.  We  left  the 
capital  of  the  world,  impatient  to  quit  for  a 
time  scenes  too  closely  connected  with  his  pre- 
sence and  his  loss."  Shelley  was  now  childless; 
of  his  five  children  not  one  remained. 

This  blow  struck  him  so  sorely  that  he 
thought  he  would  never  recover  any  cheer- 
fulness again.  His  grief  expressed  itself  in 
some  pathetic  lines  to  his  *'  Lost  William,"  no 
longer  there  to  fill  the  home  with  his  smiles. 
William  was  buried  in  the  Protestant  cemetery, 
already  so  poetically  described  in  the  letter  to 
Peacock,  and  where  his  father  was  so  soon  to 
join  him. 

The  poet  in  his  grief  thought  of  quitting 
Rome  and  Italy,  that  had  robbed  him  of  all  he 
held  most  dear,  and  of  returning  to  England. 
The  child's  death  had  had  a  terrible  effect  on 
his   health,   and    the   doctors    spoke    of    sending 


3i6    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

him  to  Africa  or  Spain  ;  he  decided,  however, 
to  remain  in  Italy,  and  went  with  Mary  to 
Leghorn,  to  seek  consolation  near  their  kind 
friends  the  Gisbornes. 

He  took  with  him,  as  the  most  precious  result 
of  the  inspiration  of  Rome,  the  three  first  acts 
of  his  "  Prometheus." 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

SHELLEY  IN  ITALY — LEGHORN  AND  FLORENCE 
— "THE  CENCI" — "  PETER  BELL  THE  THIRD  " 
— "PROMETHEUS    UNBOUND" — 1819. 

"The  year  1819/'  says  Mr.  Dowden,  "was 
Shelley's  annus  mirabilis,  and  in  one  year  to 
have  created  such  poems  as  the  *  Prometheus  ' 
and  *  The  Cenci,'  is  an  achievement  without 
parallel  in  English  poetry  since  Shakespeare  lived 
and  wrote." 

The  month  of  June,  18 19,  found  Shelley  in- 
stalled in  the  Villa  Valsovano,  between  Leghorn 
and  Monte  Nero.  The  villa  was  a  little  country 
house  set  down  in  the  centre  of  a  grassy  farm. 
A  roofed  and  glazed  terrace  at  the  top  of  the 
house  served  Shelley  as  his  study. 

He  writes  to  Peacock  on  July  6th  : 

I  have  here  a  study  in  a  tower,  something  like  Scy- 
throp's,*  where  I  am  just  beginning  to  recover  the  facuUies 
of  reading  and  writing.  My  health,  whenever  no  Libecchio 
blows,  improves.  From  my  tower  I  see  the  sea,  with  its 
islands,  Gorgona,  Capraja,  Elba,  and  Corsica  on  one  side, 
and  the  Apennines  on  the  other. 


*  Scythrop  is  the  hero  of  Peacock's  novel,  "Nightmare 
Abbey,"  which  Shelley  had  just  received  and  read  as  a 
palliative  for  his  melancholy. 


3iS    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

It  was  in  this  tower  that,  within  the  space 
of  three  months,  he  wrote  the  tragedy  of  ''  The 
Cenci." 

"Shelley  had  often  incited  me,"  Mary  writes,  "to  attempt 
the  writing  a  tragedy  ;  he  conceived  that  I  possessed  some 
dram.atic  talent,"  of  which  he  most  erroneously  believed 
himself  to  be  destitute.  "  He  beheved  that  one  of  the  tirst 
requisites  was  the  capacity  of  forming  or  following  up  a 
story  or  a  plot.  He  fancied  himself  to  be  detective  in  this 
portion  of  imagination  ;  it  was  that  which  gave  him  least 
pleasure  in  the  writings  of  others.  ...  He  asserted  that  he 
was  too  metaphysical  and  abstract,  too  fond  of  the  theoretical 
and  the  ideal,  to  succeed  as  a  tragedian. 

"The  subject  he  had  suggested  (to  me)  for  a  tragedy- 
was  Charles  I.,  and  he  had  written  to  me,  '  Remember, 
remember  Charles  I.  I  have  been  already  imagining  how 
you  would  conduct  some  scenes.  The  second  volume  of 
"St.  Leon"*  begins  with  the  proud  and  true  sentiment, 
"There  is  nothing  which  the  human  mind  can  conceive 
which  it  may  not  execute."  Shakespeare  was  only  a  human 
being.' 

"These  words  were  written  in  i8iS,  while  we  were  in 
Lombardy,  when  he  httle  thought  how  soon  a  work  of  his 
own  would  prove  a  proud  comment  on  the  passage  he 
quoted.  When  in  Rome  in  1819,  a  friend  put  into  our  hands 
the  old  manuscript  account  of  the  story  of  the  Cenci.  We 
visited  the  Colonna  and  Doria  palaces,  where  the  portraits 
of  Beatrice  were  to  be  found  ;  and  her  beauty  cast  the 
reflection  of  its  own  grace  over  her  appalling  story.  Shelley's 
imagination  became  strongly  excited,  and  he  urged  the 
subject  to  me  as  one  fitted  for  a  tragedy.  More  than  ever 
I  felt  my  incompetence,  but  I  entreated  him  to  v/rite  it 
instead  ;  and  he  began,  and  proceeded  swiftly,  urged  on  by 
intense  sympathy  with  the  sufferings  of  the  human  beings 
whose  passions,  so  long  cold  in  the  tomb,  he  revived,  and 
gifted  with  poetic  language.  This  tragedy  is  the  only  one  of 
his  works  that  he  communicated  to  me  during  its  progress. 
We  talked  over  the  arrangement  of  its  scenes  together.  I 
speedily  saw  the  great  mistake  he  had  made  as  to  the  bent 
of  his  genius.  .  .  . 

"  Shelley  wished  'The  Cenci'  to  be  acted.  He  was  not  a 
playgoer,  being  of  such  fastidious  taste  that  he  was  easily 
disgusted  by  the  bad  filling-up  of  the  secondary  parts. 
While  preparing  for  our  departure  from  England,  however, 

*  A  novel  of  Godwin's,  highly  esteemed  by  Shelley. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  319 

he  saw  Miss  O'Neil  several  times.  She  was  then  in  the 
zenith  of  her  glory,  and  Shelley  was  deeply  moved  by  her 
impersonation  of  several  parts,  and  by  the  graceful  sweet- 
ness, the  intense  pathos,  and  the  sublime  vehemence  of 
passion  she  displayed.  She  was  often  in  his  thoughts  as  he 
wrote  ;  and  when  he  had  finished,  he  became  anxious  that 
his  tragedy  should  be  acted,  and  receive  the  advantage  of 
having  this  accomplished  actress  to  fill  the  part  of  heroine.'' 

"  The  Cenci  "  was,  in  fact,  a  strong  effort  on 
Shelley's  part  to  leave  the  poetry  of  meta- 
physics and  abstractions  to  which  his  genius 
inclined  him,  and  to  enter  on  the  field  of  drama, 
which  is  both  human  and  popular.  Has  he  suc- 
ceeded ?  It  would  be  the  greatest  mistake  to 
imagine  that  in  "  The  Cenci  "  there  is  an  ordi- 
nary tragedy  which  in  any  way  recalls  cl  issical 
tragedy  or  historical  drama,  such  as  it  is  in  the 
works  of  the  dramatists  who  preceded  Shelley. 
His  original  genius  could  not  restrict  itself  to  a 
settled  conventional  form,  and  in  approaching  the 
stage,  he  was  to  inaugurate  an  entirely  personal 
conception  of  dramatic  style,  in  a  work  that  has 
nothing  in  common  with  any  which  preceded  or 
followed  it.*  ''The  Cenci ^' stands  all  alone  and 
separate  in  the  history  of  the  theatre  ;  it  has 
no  models,  and  still  less  any  imitators.  Once 
again,  and  despite  his  efforts  to  forget  himself, 
and  think  only  of  the  effect  he  desired  to  pro- 
duce, Shelley  has  created  his  own  image  in  the 
person  of  Beatrice.  "  It  is,"  as  De  Quincey  has 
said,  ''the  strife  betv/een  darkness  and  light  in 
the  story  of  the  Cenci  which  fascinated  Shelley." 
The  two  principal  characters,  the  incestuous  father 
and  his  daughter  —  the  gentle  yet  indomitable 
Beatrice — are  not  so  much  human  beings  as  living 
and  moving  abstractions,   ideal   and  superhuman 

*  In  M.  Sarrazin's  "Poètes  Modernes  de  l'Angleterre," 
the  remarkable  chapter  devoted  to  a  critique  on  "The  Cenci" 
will  be  read  with  interest  ;  also  Mr.  Swinburne's  beautiful 
preface  to  Madame  Tola  Dorian's  translation  of  this  tragedy. 


320    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

personifications  of  the  two  powers  which  Shelley 
deliglited  to  pit  against  each  other  in  all  his 
poetical  works  ;  on  one  side,  in  the  person  of 
Cenci,  the  strength  and  the  fatality  of  evil;  on 
the  other,  that  of  Beatrice — as  he  had  already 
shown  in  Cythna — of  all  that  is  most  feeble  and 
fragile,  the  soul  of  a  young  girl^  resisting  that 
fatality,  and  triumphing  over  it  by  death  and 
martyrdom.  The  circumstance  of  incest  was  in 
Shelley's  eyes  only  an  accessory  circumstance 
which  furnished  him  with  the  story,  and  served 
to  bring  out  the  abuses  of  domestic  tyranny 
with  still  greater  horror  to  those  prejudiced 
against  social  impropriety.  The  Bible,  Greece 
•with  the  "Œdipus,^'  and  Calderon,  were  his 
authorities  for  putting  upon  the  stage  an  irregu- 
larity (punished  and  expiated  by  murder)  to  which 
he  attached  in  his  own  mind  only  a  conventional 
criminality,  and  a  purely  poetical  value.  In  one 
of  his  letters,  he  propounds  a  curious  theory 
on  this  subject,  which  proves  that  he  was  more 
engrossed,  during  the  composition  of  "  The  Cenci," 
with  Calderon  than  Mary  is  willing  to  admit  in 
the  passage  cited  above.  He  says,  referring  to  one 
of  the  tragedies  of  this  great  writer,  Absalom's 
Hair  :  "  It  is  a  piece  full  of  the  deepest  and 
tenderest  touches  of  nature." 

The  incest  scene  of  "  Amon  and  Tamar"  is  perfectly  tre- 
mendous.* Incest  is,  like  many  other  incorrect  things,  a 
very  poetical  circumstance.  It  may  be  the  excess  of  love 
or  hate.  It  may  be  the  defiance  of  everything  for  the 
sake  of  another,  which  clothes  itself  in  the  glory  of  the 
highest  heroism,  or  it  may  be  that  cynical  rage  which, 
confounding  the  good  and  the  bad  in  existing  opinions, 
breaks  through  them  for  the  purpose  of  rioting  in  selfishness 
and  antipathy.  Calderon,  following  the  Jewish  historians, 
has  represented  Anion's  action  in  the  basest  point  of  view 
— he  is  a  prejudiced  savage  acting  what  he  abhors,  and 
abhorring  that  which  is  the  unwilling  party  to  his  crime. 

*  A  translation  of  this  scene  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  321 

Notwithstanding  Peacock's  objections  to  "  Tlic 
Cenci  '^ — he  considered  the  subject  too  bold,  and 
referred  the  author  to  Dryden^s  "  Œdipus,"  also 
to  the  "Mirra"  of  Alfieri — Shelley,  encouraged 
by  his  friends  at  Leghorn,  had  two  hundred  and 
fifty  copies  of  the  play  printed  in  Italy,  and 
sent  one  to  Peacock  that  he  might  offer  it  to 
Mr.  Harris  for  Covent  Garden.  Harris  declined 
it,  and  would  not  even  offer  the  rôle  of  Beatrice 
to  Miss  O'Neil,  but  promised  that  if  the  poet 
would  write  another  tragedy  on  another  subject, 
he  would  willingly  accept  it. 

The  success  of  ''The  Cenci"  with  the  reading 
public  was  such  as  Shelley  was  little  accustomed 
to.     Two  editions  appeared  during  his  lifetime. 

The  Shelley  Society  has  made  reparation  for 
the  error  of  Mr.  Harris  and  his  contemporaries. 
Under  its  auspices  "  The  Cenci  "  was  played 
by  the  best  actors  in  London  in  1S86,  and  an 
audience  composed  of  the  most  distinguished 
persons  in  art  and  literature  applauded  the 
tragedy,  to  which  the  England  of  1819  had  pre- 
ferred—  to  the  displeasure  of  B}'ron  himself  — 
"  Marino  Faliero.'' 

The  delights  of  Scythrop's  tower  do  not,  how- 
ever, prevent  Shelley  from  casting  longing  looks 
towards  England.  He  writes  to  Peacock  on  the 
22nd  August,  1819  : 

I  most  devoutly  wish  that  I  were  living  near  London, 
I  do  not  think  I  shall  settle  so  far  off  as  Richmond  ;  and 
to  inhabit  any  intermediate  spot  on  the  Thames  would 
be  to  expose  myself  to  the  river  damps,  not  to  mention  that 
it  is  not  much  to  my  taste.  My  inclinations  point  to 
Hampstead  ;  but  I  do  not  know  whether  I  should  not  make 
up  my  mind  to  something  more  completely  suburban. 
What  are  mountains,  trees,  heaths,  or  even  the  glorious 
or  ever  beautiful  sky,  with  such  sunsets  as  I  have  seen 
at  Hampstead,  to  friends?  Social  enjoyment  in  some 
form  or  other  is  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  existence. 
All  that  I  see  in  Italy  —  and  from  my  tower  window 
I  now   see   the   magnificent   peaks  of  the  Apennines  half 

Y 


322    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

enclosing  the  plain — is  nothin.fj  ;  it  dwindles  into  smoke 
in  the  mind,  when  I  think  of  some  familiar  forms  of  scenery, 
little,  perhaps,  in  themselves,  over  which  old  remembrances 
have  thrown  a  delightful  colour.  How  we  prize  what  we 
despised  when  present  1  So  the  ghosts  of  our  dead  associa- 
tions rise  and  haunt  us,  in  revenge  for  our  having  let  them 
starve,  and  abandoned  them  to  perish.  .  .  . 

I  have  been  much  better  these  last  three  weeks.  My 
work  on  ''  The  Cenci,"  which  was  done  in  two  months,  was  a 
fine  antidote  to  nervous  medicines,  and  kept  up,  I  think, 
the  pain  in  my  side  as  sticks  do  a  fire.  Since  then  I  have 
materially  improved.  I  do  not  walk  enough.  Claire,  who 
is  sometimes  my  companion,  does  not  dress  in  exactly  the 
right  time.  I  have  no  stimulus  to  walk.  Now  I  go  some- 
times to  Leghorn  on  business,  and  that  does  me  good.  .  .  . 

I  have  been  reading  Calderon  in  Spanish.  A  kind  of 
Shakespeare  is  this  Calderon  ;  and  I  have  some  thoughts, 
if  I  find  that  I  cannot  do  anything  better,  of  translating 
some  of  his  plays. 

The  particular  business  which  took  Shelley 
oftenest  to  Leghorn  was  the  project  of  con- 
structing a  steamboat,  in  which  Henry  Reveley 
then  took  a  great  interest.  The  poet  was  ambi- 
tious of  being  the  first  to  put  a  steamboat  on 
the  Mediterranean  which  should  regularly  ply 
between  Leghorn,  Genoa,  and  Marseilles,  and 
Shelley  devoted  all  his  accustomed  energy  and 
enthusiasm  to  this  enterprise  ;  he  took  the  most 
vivid  interest  in  the  designs,  and  advanced  the 
requisite  sums,  making  over  to  the  young  engineer 
all  the  profits,  and  reserving  for  himself  the  glory 
of  success — or  the  shame  of  failure. 

"Well,  how  goes  on  all?"  he  writes  on  October  28th,  to 
Henry  Reveley  ;  "the  boilers,  the  keel  of  the  boat,  and  the 
cylinder,  and  all  the  other  elements  of  that  soul  which  is  to 
guide  our  '  monstruo  de  fuego  y  agua  '  over  the  sea  ?  .  . 
Your  boat  will  be  to  the  ocean  of  water  what  this  earth  is  to 
the  ocean  of  aether — a  prosperous  and  swift  voyager." 

Unluckily,  a  few  months  later  the  departure  of 
the  Gisbornes  for  England  put  a  stop  to  these 
attractive  schemes.  Shelley  found  his  only  con- 
solation   in    going  to  contemplate  the  steamboat 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  323 

•"asleep  under  the  walls/'  where  he  was  afraid, 
he  said,  to  waken  it,  for  the  same  reason  that  he 
would  have  feared  to  awaken  Ariadne  after  Theseus 
had  left  her — unless  he  himself  had  been  Bacchus. 

Soon  after  (September,  18 19),  Shelley  left  the 
Villa  Valsovano,  to  the  regret  of  all  his  Leghorn 
friends,  even  of  Oscar  the  house-dog,  who  was 
inconsolable  at  his  departure.  He  was  attracted 
by  Florence,  the  capital  of  the  fine  arts,  and 
would  have  remained  there  longer  only  for  the 
wind  from  the  Apennines,  which  he  found  both 
unpleasant  and  insalubrious.  But  a  great  joy 
came  to  him  at  Florence  :  the  birth  (November 
I2th,  18 19)  of  another  son,  who  was  christened 
on  January  25th,  1820,  receiving  the  names  of 
Percy  Florence. 

During  his  sojourn  of  a  few  months  at  Florence, 
there  was  seldom  a  day  in  which  he  did  not  visit 
its  picture  galleries,  and  especially  its  sculptures  : 
"  There,  amid  the  varied  creations  of  Greek  Art, 
he  rested  from  his  most  arduous  labours.  The 
*  Niobe,'  the  '  Venus  Anadyomene,'  the  '  Bacchus 
and  Ampelus,'  were  objects  of  his  most  un- 
wearied admiration.  I  have  heard  him  expatiate 
on  the  subject,"  says  Medwin,  "  with  all  the 
eloquence  of  a  poet.  He  had  made  ample  notes 
on  the  wonderful  masterpieces  of  the  Gallery, 
from  which  he  allowed  me  to  make  extracts  which 
surpass  in  eloquence  anything  that  Winckelmann 
has  written  on  the  subject." 

Shelley's  letters  at  this  period  arc  full  of  the 
artistic  enthusiasm  with  which  "he  drank  the  spirit" 
of  those  marvellous  forms  of  antique  sculpture. 

"All  worldly  thoughts  and  cares,"  he  wrote,  "seem  to 
vanish  from  before  the  sublime  emotions  such  spectacles 
create  ;  and  I  am  deeply  impressed  with  the  great  difference 
of  happiness  enjoyed  by  those  who  live  at  a  distance  from 
these  incunations  of  all  that  the  finest  minds  have  conceived 
of  beauty,  and  those  who  can  resort  to  their  company  at 
pleasure.  What  should  we  think  if  we  were  forbidden  to  read 
the  great  writers  who  have  left  us  their  works  ?  " 

Y    2 


324    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   TLLE  POET. 

It  was  during  that  period  of  mental  intoxi- 
cation, that  at  Delesert's  reading-room  in  Florence, 
on  one  of  the  early  days  of  October,  he  came  across 
a  late  number  of  the  Quarterly  Review,  in  which 
he  had  been  told  he  should  find  the  famous  article 
on  "  Laon  and  Cythna,"  and  be  much  amused 
thereby.  The  grotesque  anathemas  of  the  chaste 
Reviewer  did,  in  fact,  move  him  to  convulsive 
laughter.  The  article,  a  very  bitter  one,  was  at 
first  attributed  by  Shelley  to  Southey,  but  it  was 
in  fact  the  production  of  a  former  Eton  school- 
fellow, John  Taylor  Coleridge.  P^rom  criticism 
of  the  author,  the  Reviewer  passed  to  censure  on, 
the  man  : 

He  is  too  young-,  too  ignorant,  too  vicious,  to  reform  any- 
other  -ivorld  than  the  little  world  of  his  own  heart.  If  we 
might  withdraw  the  veil  of  private  life,  and  tell  all  we  know 
about  the  writer,  it  would  be  indeed  a  disgusting  picture  that 
we  should  exhibit  ;  but  it  would  be  an  unanswerable  comment 
to  our  text,  for  it  is  not  easy  for  those  who  read  onlj',  to  con- 
ceive how  much  low  selfishness,  how  much  unmanly  cruelty, 
are  consistent  with  the  laws  of  this  universal  and  lawless  love."^' 

Such  drivel  could  not  affect  Shelley.  His  was 
a  soul  inaccessible  to  self-love,  but  full  of  grief 
and  indignation  at  the  sufferings  and  wretched- 
ness of  his  fellow-beings,  his  fellow  countrymen. 

He  had  continued,  in  Italy,  to  watch  the 
course  of  events  and  politics  in  England.  The 
news  of  the  "  Manchester  Massacre  "  (August  i6th, 
1819),  ''that  piece  of  bloodthirsty  and  murderous 
oppression/'  he  likens  to  "  the  distant  thunders  of 
the   terrible   storm   which   is   approaching.      The 

*  Hunt  warmly  defended  his  friend  in  the  Exaviitier, 
and  the  famous  "Wilson  contributed  an  article  to  the  January 
number  oi Blackwood's  Magazine,  in  which  he  compared  the 
Quarterly  Reviewer  to  a  dunce  rating  a  man  of  genius  :  ''It 
is  impossible  to  read  a  page  of  his  'Revolt  of  Islam,'  without 
perceiving  that  in  nerve  and  pith  of  conception  he  approaches 
more  nearly  to  Scott  and  Byron  than  any  other  of  their  con- 
temporaries." 


SHELLEY  EN  ITALY.  325 

tyrants  here,  as  in  the  French  Revolution,  have 
first  shed  blood.  May  their  execrable  lessons  not 
be  learnt  with  equal  docility.  .  .  .  Wliat  is  to  be 
done  ?     Something,  assuredly.''^ 

All  that  was  in  his  power  was  to  take  up  the 
lyre,  and  in  Pindaric  odes  express  his  indigna- 
tion and  patriotism.  It  was  now  that  he  wrote 
his  Revolutionary  songs  —  some  in  burning 
stanzas  and  of  visionary  vengeance,  as  in  the 
"  Mask  of  Anarchy/'  the  "  Ode  to  Liberty,"  the 
*'  God  save  the  Queen  "  ;  others  in  the  form  of  the 
bitterest,  most  withering  political  satire  that  ever 
scourged  nations,  kings,  and  Ministers,  viz.  the 
admirable  Sonnet  on  "  England  in  1819"  ;  "  Lines 
written  during  the  Administration  of  Lord  Castle- 
reagh '' ;  "Similes  of  Two  Political  Characters," 
and,  above  all,  his  incomparable  "  Song  to  the 
Men  of  England,"  the  most  eloquent  and  pathetic 
commentary  ever  written  on  the  Sic  vos  non  vobis 
of  Virgil. 

No  better  idea  of  the  versatility  of  Shelley's 
genius  can  be  gained  than  by  comparing  these 
diatribes  of  Juvenal-like  wrath  and  bitterness, 
with  his  masterpieces  of  humorous  and  burlesque 
satire,  such  as  "  Peter  Bell  the  Third  "  and  "  Swell- 
foot  the  Tyrant."  ''  The  Cenci  "  brought  us  close 
to  the  "  Q£dipus  "  of  Sophocles  ;  but  these  are 
near  to  Aristophanes. 

"  Peter  Bell  the  Third  "  is  an  ideally  perfect 
satire  on  literary  apostasy,  and  in  particular  on 
the  apostasy  of  Wordsworth. 

At  the  commencement  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, Wordsworth  had  been  among  those  English- 
men whom  the  awakening  of  Liberty  had  filled 
with  fire  and  enthusiasm. 

He  had  dreamed  of  inaugurating  a  youthful, 
human,  equalising  poesy,  which  should  put  an  end 
to  the  reign  of  the  conventional,  and  the  vapidity 
of  traditional    and    classic   poetry,    which   should 


326    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

force  the  lowliest  and  most  familiar  realities  intO' 
the  mould  of  verse  ;  a  revolution  in  both  thought 
and  Art  analogous  to  that  which  Madame  de  Staël 
desired  for  France  in  1789.  Wordsworth  worked 
all  his  life  long  at  this  revolution,  but  he  soon 
departed  from  the  generous  feelings  that  had 
inspired  his  purpose,  and  alone  could  give  it 
warmth,  vitality,  and  durability.  He  withdrew 
into  himself,  and  gave  up  his  humanitarian  visions  ; 
the  triumph  of  despotic  power  and  the  Conservative 
reaction  threw  him  into  the  camp  of  the  most 
determined  upholders  of  established  institutions  ; 
and  even  so  far  back  as  1809  he  had  become  so 
shameless  a  pervert  as  to  write  his  ^'  Pamphlet 
on  the  Capitulation  of  Cintra,"  in  which  he  re- 
proachçd  Pitt  for  not  making  war  upon  France 
more  vigorously. 

In  18 18,  Wordsworth,  who  had  become  the 
"  bard  "  of  the  Established  Church,  published  two 
Addresses  to  the  Liberals  of  Westmoreland  in 
favour  of  the  Conservatives,  thus,  by  dint  of 
flattery  and  servility  to  the  reigning  power,  estab- 
lishing his  claims  to  the  post  of  Poet  Laureate,  in 
which  he,  in  fact,  succeeded  Southey  in  1843. 

Shelley,  from  his  earliest  boyhood,  had  been  a 
passionate  admirer  of  Wordsworth.  Many  in- 
tellectual and  literary  sympathies  attracted  him 
to  a  school  of  poetry  which  was  essentially 
personal,  sentimental,  and  dreamy,  and  which 
invested  all  the  phenomena  of  the  universe  with 
meaning  ;  he  forgave  Wordsworth  for  what  was 
"drowsy  and  frowzy"  in  him,  as  Byron  called  it,  his 
puerile  inventions,  and  his  dull  prosing,  for  the 
sake  of  the  moral  and  emotional  idealism  through 
which  the  solitary  poet  of  Mount  Rydal  contem- 
plated and  vivified  Nature.  More  than  one  trace 
may  be  found  in  Shelley's  works  of  the  influence 
of  that  poet  who  was  moved  by  the  humblest 
flower  or  blade  of  grass  to  "  thoughts  too  deep  for 
tears." 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  327 

He  had  at  an  early  period  competed  with  him 
on  his  own  ground,  by  treating  some  of  his 
favourite  themes  with  ingenuousness  and  sim- 
pHcity,  and  while  at  Geneva  had  succeeded  in 
imparting  to  Byron  so  great  an  appreciation  of  a 
poet  whom  the  haughty  author  of  "  EngHsh  Bards 
and  Scotch  Reviewers  "  had  described  as  "  the 
meanest  object  of  the  lowly  group/'  that  Words- 
worth recognised  himself  in  the  third  canto  of 
«'Childe  Harold." 

•  But  the  greater  his  admiration  and  affection 
for  the  favoured  child  of  the  Muses,  the  more  did 
Shelley  deplore  the  part  taken  by  him  in  political 
matters.  In  July,  1818,  when  the  Addresses  to 
the  Liberals  of  Westmoreland  were  published,  he 
wrote  in  the  following  unmeasured  language  to 
Peacock  :  "  I  have  been  informed  of  the  unfortunate 
termination  of  the  Westmoreland  elections.  I  wish 
you  had  sent  me  some  of  the  overflowing  villainy 
of  those  apostates.  What  a  beastly  and  pitiful 
wretch,  that  Wordsworth  !  That  such  a  man 
should  be  such  a  poet  !  I  can  compare  him  with 
no  one  but  Simonides,  that  flatterer  of  the  Sicilian 
tyrants,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  natural  and 
tender  of  lyric  poets." 

The  satire  of  "Peter  Bell  the  Third''  must 
have  been  conceived  at  this  period. 

Shelley  wanted  to  prove  that  the  poet,  capable 
of  abjuring  the  gods  of  his  youth,  and  of  bowing 
down  before  power  and  public  opinion,  was  con- 
demned to  see  his  sources  of  inspiration  dried  up, 
and  to  fall  into  platitudes  and  dulness. 

But  Shelley  had  not  waited  until  those  latter 
days  to  brand  the  apostasy  of  his  favourite  poet; 
in  181 5,  he  had  bewailed  in  touching  lines  the 
desertion  of  him  whom  he  calls  the  "  Poet  of 
Mature,  ...  a  lone  star  whose  light  did  shine 

On  some  frail  bark  in  Winter's  midnight  roar  ; 

...  A  rock-built  refuge  .  .  . 
Above  the  blind  and  battliiig  multitude." 


328     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

Shelley's  reproaches  did  not  reach  the  ear 
of  the  god.  Wordsworth  had  become  verbose, 
oracular,  tolerating  none  lower  than  himself, 
scarcely  admitting  there  could  be  any  one  higher, 
and  comparing  himself  to  Milton. 

He  disdained  contemporary  poets,  especially 
those  who  dared  to  stray  from  the  paths  newly 
trodden   by  him,  and   he  ignored   Shelley. 

On  one  occasion,  before  Trelawney  was 
personally  acquainted  with  the  author  of  "  Queen 
Mab/'  he  met  an  English  tourist  at  Geneva, 
accompanied  by  his  wife  and  sister,  who  was 
bitterly  lamenting  that  Switzerland  was  becoming 
a  commonplace  and  civilised  country,  wherein  a 
lover  of  Nature  could  no  longer  find  a  solitary  spot 
in  which  to  contemplate  at  leisure  the  wild  beauty 
of  the  scenery. 

''Yesterday,"  he  grumbled,  "at  break  of  day, 
I  scaled  the  most  rugged  height  within  my  reach  ; 
it  looked  inaccessible  ;  this  pleasant  delusion  was 
quickly  dispelled  ;  I  was  rudely  startled  out  of 
a  deep  reverie  by  the  accursed  jarring,  jingling, 
and  rumbling  of  a  calèche,  and  harsh  voices  that 
drowned  the  torrent's  fall."  The  grumbling  tourist 
was  Wordsworth.  Trelawney  accosted  him,  and 
without  further  ceremony  asked  him  plainly  : 
"  What  do  you  think  of  Shelley  as  a  poet }  " 
^'Nothing,"  replied  Wordsworth;  then  seeing  the 
astonishment  of  his  interlocutor,  he  continued  : 
"a  poet  who  has  not  produced  a  good  poem  be- 
fore he  is  twenty-five,  we  may  conclude  cannot, 
and  never  will  do  so."  "But  'The  Cenci'?'' 
*'  Won't  do,"  he  replied,  shaking  his  head,  ;;3 
he  got  into  the  carriage  ;  a  rough-coated  Scotch 
terrier  followed  him.  "  This  hairy  fellow  is  our  flea- 
trap."  To  the  honour  of  Wordsworth  it  must  be 
admitted  that,  at  a  subsequent  period,  he  overcame 
his  prejudice  against  Shelley,  and  rendered  him 
justice,  "Peter  Bell  the  Third"  notwithstanding.* 

*  Shelley  so  designated  his  poem  because  it  was  written 


SHELLEY  AV  ITALY.  329 

Shelley  considered  "  Peter  Bell  the  Thh-d  "  as 
rnerely  a  slight  satire  in  which,  as  he  says,  both 
lines  and  language  had  it  their  own  way.  It 
was  hardly  finished,  when  a  political  incident 
drew  his  attention  to  one  of  his  favourite  subjects, 
that  of  the  Defence  of  the  Liberty  of  the  Press. 
The  publication  of  the  works  of  the  well-known 
revolutionist,  Thomas  Paine,  and  in  particular  of 
his  "Age  of  Reason,^' had  been  the  occasion  of 
one  of  the  most  odious  persecutions  due  to  the 
English  law  of  libel,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
present  century.  Carlile,  the  publisher,  was 
condemned  to  prison,  but  continued,  from  his 
cell,  to  appeal  to  public  opinion  in  the  columns 
of  the  Republican.  Shelley  could  not  fail  to  be 
interested  in  the  fate  of  so  courageous  a  victim  ; 
]ie  took  up  the  defence  of  Carlile  in  an  eloquent 
letter  intended  for  the  Examiner.  In  that  letter 
lie  warmly  attacks  the  capricious  restrictions  im- 
posed on  the  Press  by  a  power  as  illusory  as 
it  is  arbitrary.  He  names  himself,  among  a 
constellation  of  great  men  and  great  writers, 
who,  if  Law  were  Justice,  would  be  more  rightly 
prosecuted  than  a  poor  bookseller.  He  claims 
trial  by  their  peers  for  Carlile  and  Paine  ;  a 
jury  composed,  not  of  so-called  Christians,  but 
of  the  philosophers  and  Deists  who  are  unjustly 
shielded  by  their  high  social  position  from  similar 
prosecution  :  such  as  Sir  William  Drummond, 
"  the  most  acute  metaphysical  critic  of  the  age, 
a  man  of  profound  learning  ....  unblemished 
integrity  of  character,^'  and  as  undisguised  an 
opponent  of  Christianity  as  Paine;  Godwin,  the 
author  of"  Political  Justice  "  and  the  "Enquirer," 
who   has  treated    Christianity    as    an    "  exploded 

after  Wordsworth's  "  Peter  Bell,''  :uid  after  a  parody  thereon, 
written  by  J.  Hamilton  Reynolds,  one  of  the  three  young 
poets  patronised  by  Leigh  Hunt,  and  was  especially  directed 
against  Wordsworth's  allcycçl  puerilities  and  literary  fatuity. 
See  Mr.  Forman's  fine  edition. 


330    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

superstition,  to  which,  in  the  present  state  of 
knowledge,  it  was  unworthy  ....  as  a  moral 
philosopher,  to  advert  ;  "  and  Mr.  Burdon,  a 
gentleman  of  great  fortune,  who  had  published 
a  book  "  called  '  Materials  for  Thinking/  in  which 
he  plainly  avows  his  disbelief  in  the  divine 
authority  of  the  Bible." 

Hunt,  to  whom  the  letter  was  addressed 
(Nov.  3rd),  did  not  publish  it,  on  account,  pro- 
bably, of  its  strong  language  and  the  high  person- 
ages attacked  by  Shelley.  The  poet  acquiesced 
without  demur  in  his  friend's  decision,  and  set  to 
work  on  a  political  treatise  less  aggressive  in 
tone,  in  which  he  proposed  to  include  the  theory 
of  every  needful  reform  in  Government*  Ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Dowden's  analysis  of  the  work, 
Shelley,  after  rapidly  sketching  the  effect  of 
Reform,  the  French  Revolution,  and  the  eighteenth 
century  on  the  "hopes  and  aspirations  of  the 
human  race,"  passes  on  to  consider  the  various 
reforms  necessary  to  the  government  of  England, 
and  the  possible  and  desirable  mode  in  which 
they  should  take  place.  The  advance  of  literature 
in  his  own  country  at  the  beginning  of  the  cen- 
tury, seemed  to  Shelley  to  be  the  prophecy  of 
great  social  and  political  change.f  One  of 
the  principal  causes  of  the  social  misery  in 
England   he   held   to   be   the   modern    device   of 

*  The  "  Philosophical  View  of  Reform,"  which  was  begun 
in  December,  1819,  and  in  great  part  finished  in  INIay,  1^20, 
has  remained  in  manuscript.  Mr.  Forman  has  published 
but  two  short  fragments.  Mr.  Dowden,  who  has  seen  the 
manuscript,  considers  that  "it  sets  forth  the  writer's  opinions 
on  political  subjects  with  sufficient  fulness,  and  makes  us 
acquainted  with  the  side  of  his  mind  presented  to  actual 
politics  as  no  published  writing  of  Shelley's  has  done."  It 
remains  for  the  Shelleyan  Society  to  fill  the  void  by  publish- 
ing these  important  passages. 

t  The  passage  containing  this  prophetical  view  may  be 
found  at  the  close  of  his  "  Defence  of  Poetry." 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  331 

public  credit,  by  means  of  which  companies  and 
bankers  grew  rich  at  the  expense  of  the  poor  ; 
the  increase  of  the  national  industry  which  this 
system  is  supposed  to  effect,  ends  merely  in 
increasing  the  misery  of  the  poor  and  the  luxury 
of  the  rich;  "  to  make  a  manufacturer"  (an  artisan, 
as  we  now  say)  "  work  sixteen  hours  where 
he  had  only  worked  eight  ;  to  turn  children 
into  lifeless  and  bloodless  machines  at  an  age 
when  otherwise  they  would  be  at  play  before 
the  cottage  ^oors  of  their  parents  ;  to  augment 
indefinitely  the  proportion  of  those  who  enjoy 
the  profit  of  the  labour  of  others  .  .  ,  to  create  a 
new  aristocracy  of  attorneys,  excisemen,  directors, 
Government  jîensioners,  usurers,  stock-jobbers, 
who  .  .  .  can  only  eat,  and  drink,  and  sleep,  and 
in  the  intervals  of  these  actions  cringe  and  lie,'' 
without  ever  exercising  the  true  and  noble  facul- 
ties of  the  soul,  while  the  poor  toiler  knows  but 
pain  and  misery  in  the  present,  and  has,  in  the 
future,  only  "  those  gleams  of  hope  which  seem 
to  speak  to  him  of  Paradise,  only  to  make  dark- 
ness visible,  like  the  flames  of  Milton's  hell." 

"  The  so-called  National  Debt  is  but  the  debt 
of  the  privileged  classes  and  of  the  tyrants  who 
incurred  it  in  unjust  and  liberticide  wars.  The 
labour  which  it  represents  .  .  .  since  the  com- 
mencement of  the  American  war,  would,  if 
properly  employed,  have  covered  our  land  with 
monuments  of  architecture  exceeding  the  sump- 
tuousness  and  the  beauty  of  Egypt  and  Athens  ; 
it  might  have  made  every  peasant's  cottage  a 
little  paradise  of  comfort,  with  every  convenience 
desirable  .  .  .  neat  tables  and  chairs,  and  good 
beds,  and  a  collection  of  useful  books  ;  and  our 
fleet,  manned  by  sailors  well-paid  and  well-clothed, 
might  have  kept  watch  round  this  glorious  island 
against  the  less  enlightened  nations  which  as- 
suredly would   have  envied   its   prosperity."     As 


332     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

a  remedy  to  the  the:i  state  of  things,  Shelley 
proposed  that  the  privileged  classes  should  alone 
be  held  legally  responsible  for  the  National  Debt, 
and  that  special  tribunals  should  be  created  for 
its  liquidation. 

As  to  reform  of  Parliament  and  the  system  of 
representation,  Shelley,  in  this  treatise,  is  most 
moderate  in  his  views  ;  universal  suffrage,  or 
the  admission  of  women  to  the  rights  of  suffrage, 
seem  to  him  dangerous  and  premature  measures. 

As  he  advanced  in  life,  his  aversion  to  violent 
means  and  sudden  resolves  increased. 

"  The  great  thing  to  do,"  he  said,  "  is  to  hold  the  balance 
between  popular  impatience  and  tyrannical  obstinacy  ;  to 
inculcate  with  fervour  both  the  right  of  resistance  and  the 
duty  of  forbearance.  You  know  my  principles  incite  me  to 
take  all  the  good  I  can  get  in  politics,  for  ever  aspiring  to 
something  more.  I  am  one  of  those  whom  nothing  will  fully 
satisfy,  but  who  are  ready  to  be  partially  satisfied  in  all  that 
is  practicable.  ...  I  have  a  motto  on  a  ring  in  Italian,  '  11 
buon  tempo  verra.'  There  is  a  tide  both  in  public  and  in 
private  affairs,  which  awaits  both  men  and  nations." 

He  liked  also  to  quote  Rousseau's  saying,  that 
he  would  rather  see  things  remain  as  they  are 
than  shed  one  drop  of  blood.  He  never  lost 
faith  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  social  reform  ; 
but  that  triumph  would  be  due  to  a  slow  and 
calculated  revolution  based  principally  on  the 
moral  reform  of  individuals.  It  was  on  this 
human  and  philosophic  basis  that  he  founded 
his  hopes  of  the  universal  regeneration,  of  the 
palingenesis  of  mankind  and  the  world,  which 
he  sang  with  such  poetic  and  sublime  fervour 
in  the  fourth   act  of  his  "  Prometheus  Unbound." 

This,  the  last  supplementary  portion,  written 
at  Florence  in  December,  1819,  is  the  culminating 
point  of  Shelley's  genius  as  a  lyric  poet.  This 
grandiose  and  unique  work,  which  we  possess  in 
its  entirety,  lifts  its  autiior  at  once  above  every 
lyric   poet  of  the  century. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  333 

Shelley  was  conscious  of  the  value  of  his 
"  Prometheus/'  and  esteemed  it  in  proportion  to 
the  labour  it  had  cost  him  : 

My  friends  say  my  ■'Prometheus"  is  too  wild,  ideal,  and 
perplexed  with  imagery  ;  it  may  be  so  It  has  no  resemblance 
to  the  Greek  drama;  it  is  original,  and  cost  me  severe  labour. 
If  that  is  not  durable  poetry,  tried  by  the  severest  test,  I  do 
not  know  what  is.  It  is  a  lofty  subject,  not  inadequately 
treated,  and  should  not  perish  with  n"ier 

Shelley's  judgment  has  been  confirmed  by 
posterity,  and  whatever  may  be  the  defects  of 
this  prodigious  work  in  detail,  to  us  it  appears 
like  one  of  the  gigantic  Sphinxes  of  tlie  desert, 
defying  man  and  time  alike.  We  willingly  join 
in  Mr.  Rossctti's  fine  panegyric  : 

There  is,  I  suppose,  no  poem  comparable,  in  the  fair  sense 
of  that  word,  to  ''  Prometheus  Unbound."  The  immense 
scale  and  boundless  scope  of  the  conception  ;  the  marble 
majesty  and  extramundane  passions  of  the  personages  ;  the 
sublimity  of  ediical  aspiration  ;  the  radiance  of  ideal  and 
poetic  beauty  which  saturates  every  phase  of  the  subject,  and 
(almost,  as  it  were)  wraps  it  from  sight  at  times,  and  trans- 
forms it  out  of  sense  into  spirit;  the  rolling  river  of  great 
sound  and  lyrical  rapture  ;  form  a  combination  not  to  be 
matched  elsewheie,  and  scarcely  to  encounter  competition. 
There  is  another  source  of  greatness  in  this  poem  neither  to 
be  foolishly  lauded  nor  (stiil  less)  undervalued.  It  is  this  : 
that  "Prometheus  Unbound,"  however  remote  the  foundation 
of  its  subject-matter,  and  unactual  its  executive  treatment, 
does  in  reality  express  the  most  modern  of  rnnrf>p|ipng^  ti-.» 
utmost  reach  of  specuIatttTTT-pra  mind  wjnch  hurst  up  all. 
crîrsrs-of  LUhluiii  .ind  |jit>gci,-iption  like,  a  ygfCâno,  and  unaged 
'jor»i_aJuture  wherein  man  should  be  indeed  the  amjaG44i£and 
renovated  r^no\  ator_orïïîrpt;rnëE  Tïïis  it  is,  I  apprehend, 
which  places  "Prometheus^  deafly,  instead  of  disputably,  at 
the  summit  of  all  latter  poetry  ;  the  fact  that  It  embodies,  in 
forms  of  truly  ecstaUcbeautx,^h£~cTu^^  of  the 

dominan^4«teHcrts-t3t  the  ag^7and_espee4«tt7^«f  one  of  the 
exrremes4-^g^jngjre|l^jiniOng  ■rtTénrau7the  auihoTlimiaelLi 
It  is  the  ideal  poem  of  perpèTùal  a»d  tiluiiipliaTrrprogrcssion 
— the  Atlantis  of  Man  Emancipated. 

Mrs.    Shelley    has   very   clearly    described    in 


334    SHELLEY— THE   MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

her  notes,  the  spirit,  genesis,  and  development 
of  this  grand  composition  : 

During  his  travels  in  Italy  (1818-1819),  Shelley  meditated 
on  the  subject  of  his  drama.  .  .  .  But  though  he  diversified 
his  studies,  his  thoughts  centred  in  the  "  Prometheus."  At 
last,  when  at  Rome,  during  a  bright  and  beautiful  spring,  he 
gave  up  his  whole  time  to  the  composition.  .  .  . 

At  first  he  completed  the  drama  in  thi-ee  acts.  It  was 
not  till  several  months  after,  when  at  Florence,  that  he  con- 
ceived that  a  fourth  act,  a  sort  of  hymn  of  rejoicino-  in  fulfil- 
ment of  the  prophecies  with  regard  to  Prometheus,  ought  to 
be  added  to  complete  the  composition. 

The  prominent  feature  of  Shelley's  theory  of  the  destiny 
of  the  human  species  was,  thai,  «vil  is  not  inherent  in  the 
system  of  the  creation,  but  an  accident  that  might  be 
expellectT  T1îrè~atso  forms  a  portion  of  Christianity  ;  God 
made  earth  and  man  perfect,  till  he,  by  his  fall, 

"  Brought  death  into  the  world,  and  all  our  woe." 

Shelley  believed  that  mankind  had  only  to  will  that  there 
should  be  no  evil,  and  there  would  be  none.  He  was 
attached  to  this  opinion  with  fervent  enthusiasm.  That  man 
could  be  so  perfectionised  as  to  be  able  to  expel  evil  from 
his  own  nature,  and  from  the  greater  part  of  the  creation, 
was  a  cardinal  point  of  his  system.  And  the  subject  he 
loved  best  to  dwell  on  was  the  image  of  One  warring  with 
the  Evil  Principle,  oppressed  not  only  by  it,  but  by  nil,  even 
the  good,  who  were  deluded  into  considering  evil  a  necessary 
portion  of  humanity.  A  victim  full  of  fortitude  and  hope, 
and  the  spirit  of  triumph  emanating  from  a  reliance  in  the 
ultimate  omnipotence  of  good— such  he  had  depicted  in  his 
last  poem,  when  he  made  Laon  the  enemy  and  the  victim  of 
tyrants.  He  now  took  a  more  idealised  image  of  the  same 
subject. 

He  followed  certain  classical  authorities  in  figuring 
Saturn  as  the  good  principle,  Jupiter  the  usurping  evil  one, 
and  Prometheus  the  regenerator,  who,  unable  to  bring 
mankind  back  to  primitive  innocence,  used  knowledge  as  a 
weapon  to  defeat  evil,  by  leading  mankind  beyond  the  state 
wherein  they  are  sinless  through  ignorance,  to  that  in  which 
they  are  virtuous  through  wisdom.  Jupiter  punished  the 
tem.erity  of  the  Titan  by  chaining  him  to  a  rock  of  Caucasus, 
and  causing  a  vulture  to  devour  his  still  renewed  heart. 
There  was  a  prophecy  afloat  in  Heaven,  portending  the  fall 
of  Jove,  the  secret  of  averting  which  was  known  only  to 
Prometheus  ;  and  the  god  offered  freedom  from  torture  on 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  335 

condition  of  its  being  communicated  to  him.  According  to 
the  mythological  story,  this  referred  to  the  offspring  of 
Thetis,  who  was  destined  to  be  greater  than  his  father. 
Prometheus  at  last  bought  pardon  for  his  crime  of  enriching 
mankind  with  his  gifts,  by  revealing  the  prophecy.  Hercules 
killed  the  vulture,  and  sec  him  free  ;  and  Thetis  was  married 
to  Peleus,  the  father  of  Achilles. 

Shelley  adapted  the  catastrophe  of  this  story  to  his  own 
peculiar  views.  The  son,  greater  than  his  father,  born  of  the 
nuptials  of  Jupiter  and  Thetis,  was  to  dethrone  evil,  and 
bring  back  a  happier  reign  than  that  of  Saturn.  Prometheus 
defies  the  power  of  his  enemy,  and  endures  centuries  of 
torture,  till  the  hour  arrives  when  Jove,  blind  to  the  real 
event,  but  darkly  guessing  that  some  great  good  to  himself 
will  flow,  espouses  Thetis.  At  the  moment,  the  Primal.  Power 
of  the  world  drives  him  from  his  usurped  throne,  and  Strength, 
in  the  person  of  Hercules,  liberates  Humanity,  typified  in 
Prometheus,  from  the  tortures  generated  by  evils  done  or 
suffered.  Asia,  one  of  the  Oceanides,is  the  wife  of  Prometheus; 
she  was,  according  to  other  mythological  interpretations, 
the  same  as  Venus  and  Nature.  When  the  Benefactor  of 
Mankind  is  liberated.  Nature  resumes  the  beauty  of  her 
prime,  and  is  united  to  her  husband,  the  emblem  of  the 
human  race,  in  perfect  and  happy  union.  In  the  fourth  act, 
the  poet  gives  further  scope  to  his  imagination,  and  idealises 
the  forms  of  creation,  such  as  we  know  them,  instead  of  such 
as  they  appeared  to  the  Greeks.  Maternal  Earth,  the  mighty 
parent,  is  superseded  by  the  Spirit  of  the  Earth — the  guide  of 
our  planet  through  the  realms  of  sky — while  his  fair  and 
weaker  companion  and  attendant,  the  Spirit  of  the  Moon, 
receives  bliss  from  the  annihilation  of  evil  in  the  superior 
sphere, 

Shelley  develops,  pore  particularly  in  the  lyrics  of  this 
dcam^  bis  abfitr'K^p  anrl  imngjnpitive  theories  v/itli  legaid  to 
J;he  Creation.  It  requires  a  mind  as  subtle  and  penetrating 
as  his  own  to  understand  the  mystic  meanings  scattered 
throughout  the  poem.  They  elude  the  ordinary  reader  by 
their  abstraction  and  delicacy  of  distinction,  but  they  are  far 
from  vague.  It  was  his  design  to  write  prose  metaphysical 
essays  on  the  nature  of  man,  which  would  have  served  to 
explain  much  of  what  is  obscure  in  his  poetry  ;  a  few 
scattered  fragments  of  observations  and  remarks  alone 
remain.  He  considered  these  philosophical  views  of  mind 
and  nature  to  be  instinct  with  the  intense^t  spirit  of  poetry. 

Mpre  popular  poets  clothe^  the- ideal  with  familiar  and 
^pn!îih]p  ixnrriyry.  Sholley  Invpfl  fn  ulpiilise  the  real— to  gift 
the  mechanism  of  the  mntpi-inl  nnivprsp  with  n  soul  and  a 
voiceT^anH^ to  bestow  such  also  on  the  most  delicate  and 


336    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

abstract  emotions  and  thoughts  of  the  mind.  Sophocles  was 
his  orreat  master  in  this  species  of  imagery.  .  .  .  In  reading- 
Shelley's  poetry  we  often  hnd  similar  verses,  resembling,  but 
not  imitating,  the  Greek  in  this  species  of  imagery  ;  for 
though  he  adopted  the  style,  he  gifted  it  with  that  originality 
of  form  and  colouring  which  sprang  from  his  own  genius.  .  .  . 
The  tone  of  the  composition  [of  "Prometheus  Unbound"] 
is  calmer  and  more  majestic,  the  poetry  more  perfect  as  a 
whole,  and  the  imagination  displayed  at  once  more  pleasingly 
beautiful,  and  more  varied  and  daring  [than  in  any  of  his 
previous  attempts].  .  .  .  Throughout  the  whole  poem  there 
reigns  a  sort  of  calm  and  holy  spirit  of  love  ;  it  soothes  the 
tortured,  and  is  hope  to  the  expectant,  until  the  prophecy  is 
fulfilled,  and  Love,  untainted  by  any  evil,  becomes  the  law  of 
the  world. 

No  ancient  myth  has^  in  equal  measure  to 
that  of  Prometheus,  awakened  in  the  human  soul 
the  longinc^  to  lift  the  thick  veil  that  hides  the 
origin  of  the  world  and  of  the  human  race.  It 
was  very  variously  interpreted  even  in  the  time 
of  the  Greeks,  by  Hcsiod  and  ^Eschylus,  and 
has  become  to  the  modern  world  a  terrible  Sphinx, 
which  every  soul  haunted  by  the  symbolically 
expressed  mysteries  of  the  ancient  wisdom  has 
in  turn  consulted,  receiving  replies  in  harmony 
with  its  own  philosophic  convictions,  or  those 
of  its  century.  Among  all  the  various  interpre- 
tations_,  one  seems  to  have  prevailed  ;  that  one 
which  makes  of  Prometheus  a  personification  or 
good,  in  the  struggle  of  good  and  evil,  of  spirit 
as  against  force,  of  liberty  and  progress  in  conflict 
with  tyranny  and  ignorance — an  eternal  struggle 
which  seems  the  very  condition  of  life  and  beings 
The  Greeks  in  delivering  Prometheus,  in  order 
that  he  may  be  reconciled  with  Zeus  his  eternal 
enemy,  must  surely  have  had  some  conception 
of  the  inherent  necessity  of  things,  of  the  "  struggle 
for  life,"  as  it  is  called  by  modern  science,  of  life 
itself  consisting  in  struggle,  and  of  the  discord 
which  produces  the  essential  and  final  harmony 
of  the    world.     We  are  inclined   to   believe   that 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  337 

they  had  ;  hence  we  must  seek  in  the  thu'd  part 

of  the  y^schylean    trilogy,   unhappily   lost   to   us, 

for  the  true  philosophic  and  scientific  meaning  of 

the  mythic   Prometheus.     Shelley's  interpretation 

is    of   an    opposite    character.      Being    absolutely 

convinced   that   with   the   disappearance   of  Zeus 

.and   all    his    representatives,    a   new   golden    age 

would   be   created   on   earth   by   the   strength   of 

the   human   will   alone,   he    could    not    accept   a 

compromise   to  which    the  wise   temperament   of 

Greece  resigned  itself,  unless  he  might  make  the 

best  of  it  by  the  aid  of  his  faculties  and  his  genius. 

Christianity  and  its    ultra-terrestrial    Utopias  had 

not  passed  in  vain  through  the  mind  of  the  poet. 

Like  the  Christian  Prometheus,  the  victim  of  the 

Judaic   Zeus,  he   also   dreamed  of  an    everlasting 

Paradise  for  humanity,  but  a  paradise  to  be  found 

on     earth     purified     and    regenerated     by     love. 

Christian  and  Biblical  ideas  suggested  to  him  the 

thought  of  extending  this  regeneration  not  only 

to  the  moral  and  human  world,  but  also  to  the 

entire  universe  of  suns  and  spheres,  whose  destin 'es, 

as  in  the  Mosaic  Genesis,  seemed  linked  with  that 

of  humanity  itself.     This  grandiose  dream  all  to 

the   honour  of  mind,  the  only  god  of  this  world, 

has  at  any  rate  given  us  in  the  last  act,  or  rather 

last  chant,  of  "  Prometheus  Unbound  "  the  most 

sublime   hymn   ever   uttered    to   the  glory  of  the 

eternal  harmony  of  Nature,  as  apprehended  by  the 

human  soul  in  communion  with  her. 

Michelet,  in  "  La  Mer,"  has  written  like  a  poet 
of  the  symphony  of  worlds  of  which  science  is 
endeavouring  to  read  the  score  ;  of  the  mathe- 
matical relation  of  the  stars  between  themselves, 
which  are  the  harmonic  intervals  of  the  celestial 
music  ;  "  the  earth,"  he  says,  "  in  her  tides,  greater 
and  less,  speaks  to  her  sisters  the  planets.  Do 
they  reply }  We  must  believe  they  do.  From 
their  fluid  elements  they  too  must  rise  up,  conscious 

z 


338     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

of  the  impulse  of  the  earth.  Mutual  attraction, 
the  bent  of  each  planet  to  come  forth  from  its 
egoism,  must  be  the  cause  of  sublime  dialogues 
in  the  heavens.  Unfortunately  the  ear  of  man 
hears  but  the  least  part  of  these." 

Shelley  heard  one  of  those  dialogues,  and  has 
marvellously  rendered  it  for  us  in  the  fourth  act 
of  his  "  Prometheus." 


I 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

SHELLEY  IN  ITALY— PISA — LEGHORN — THE  BATHS 
OF  ST.  GIULIANO  —  LETTER  TO  MARIA 
GISBORNE — "  HYMN  TO  MERCURY  " —  "  THE 
WITCH  OF  ATLAS" — SHELLEY  AND  KEATS — 
*'ADONAIS" — 1820. 

It  was  not  without  keen  regret  that  Shelley  was 
forced  by  the  "  infernal  cold  of  Florence,"  to  leave 
the  "  fairest  of  cities  beneath  the  sun,"  the  sculp- 
tures he  so  dearly  loved,  and  the  delightful 
wooded  banks  of  the  Arno,  where  he  studied 
Dante,  and  wrote  the  last  canto  of  the  "  Pro- 
metheus "  He  took  refuge  at  Pisa  (January  26th, 
1820)  from  the  terrible  Apennine  winds,  antici- 
pating enjoyment  from  sky,  water,  and  mountains 
"  I  must  suffer  at  any  rate,''  he  says,  "  but  I  expect 
to  suffer  less  in  a  boat  than  in  a  carriage." 

With  the  spring  there  came,  in  the  milder 
climate  of  Pisa,  the  usual  improvement  in  Shelley's 
health,  which  was  likewise  promoted  by  the  wise 
treatment  of  the  celebrated  Dr.  Vacca.  "  Only 
for  certain  moral  causes,"  he  "would  have  been 
greatly  benefited  "  by  his  "  residence  in  Italy." 
Among  these  moral  causes  must  be  reckoned 
the  departure  of  the  Gisbornes  for  England, 
the  final  failure  of  the  steamboat  undertaking, 
the  refusal    of  his   tragedy   at    Covent    Garden, 

z  2 


340    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

his  homesick  longing  for  England,  and  above 
all,  the  vexations  inflicted  on  him  by  Godwin. 
It  was  no  slight  source  of  pain  to  Shelley, 
that  Godwin,  after  all  his  sacrifices  in  the 
endeavour  to  serve  him,  should  treat  him  with 
so  little  consideration  and  friendship.  Godwin 
was  on  the  brink  of  ruin,  and  laid  the  blame  of 
his  unfortunate  position,  which  v/as  due  to  his 
own  carelessness,  on  his  friend  and  benefactor. 
Shelley  grew  weary  of  flinginp  money  into  the 
Skinner  Street  abyss  : 

Except  for  the  ^ood-will  which  this  transaction  seems  to 
have  produced  between  you  and  me,  this  money,  for  any 
advantage  that  it  ever  conferred  on  you,  might  as  well  have 
been  thrown  into  the  sea.  Had  I  kept  in  my  own  hands  this 
;^4ooo  or  ^5000,  and  administered  it  in  trust  for  your  perma- 
nent advantage,  I  should  have  been  indeed  your  benefactor. 
.  .  .  Sir  PhiHp  Sidney,  when  dying  and  consumed  with 
thirst,  gave  the  helmet  of  water  which  was  brought  to  him 
to  the  wounded  soldier  who  stood  beside  him.  It  would  not 
have  been  generosity,  but  folly,  had  he  poured  it  on  the 
ground,  as  you  would  that  I  should  the  wrecks  of  my  once 
prosperous  fortune.  ...  If  you  are  sincere  on  this  subject, 
why,  instead  of  seeking  to  plunge  one  already  half-ruined  for 
your  sake  into  deeper  ruin,  do  you  not  procure  the  ^400  by 
your  own  active  power?  A  person  of  your  extraordinary 
accomplishments  might  easily  obtain  from  the  booksellers, 
for  the  promise  of  a  novel,  a  sum  exceeding  this  amount. 
Your  "Answer  to  Malthus "  would  sell  for  at  least  ^400. 

Meanwhile  some  pleasant  acquaintances  at 
Pisa  made  a  break  in  the  clouds.  One  of  the 
celebrities  of  Pisa  was  Professor  Vacca,  to  whom 
the  city  subsequently  raised  a  monument,  designed 
by  Thorwaldsen,  in  the  Catnpo  Santo.  Vacca's 
views  on  philosophy  and  politics  were  for  the 
most  part  the  same  as  Shelley's  ;  and  he  did  the 
latter  a  great  service  by  inducing  him  to  dispense 
with  doctors  and  drugs,  and  trust  to  Nature 
for  a  cure. 

In  addition  to  this  friend  there  was  Lady 
Mountcashel,  a  woman  of  superior  attainments,  who 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  341 

had  been  the  favourite  pupil  of  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft  thirty  years  before,  when  Mary  was  governess 
in  the  family  of  Lord  Kingston  ;  and  on  the 
occasion  of  Godwin's  visit  to  Ireland  in  1800, 
Lady  Mountcashel  had  received  him  with  hos- 
pitality. She  had  retained  the  republican  and 
philosophic  principles  of  her  masculine  education  ; 
her  mind  was  cultivated,  her  disposition  mild, 
benevolent  and  imperturbably  serene.  She  had 
long  been  separated  from  her  husband,  the  Earl 
of  Mountcashel,  and  was  living  in  Italy  with  Mr. 
George  William  Tighe,  who,  being  disgusted  with 
the  world,  lived  apart  from  it  in  the  company  of  his 
books.  According  to  Medwin  Lady  Mountcashel 
inspired  Shelley  with  his  exquisite  poem  of  the 
"  Sensitive  Plant." 

Yet,  in  spite  of  the  charm  that  the  society  of 
friends,  so  congenial  to  his  intellect,  had  for 
Shelley,  his  heart  was  in  London  with  the 
Gisbornes.    On  May  26th,  1820,  he  wrote  to  them  : 

I  am  just  returned  from  a  visit  to  Leghorn,  Casciano,  and 
the  old  fortress  at  Sant'  Elmo.  .  .  .  Everything  seems  in 
excellent  order  at  Casa  Ricci— garden,  pigeons,  tables,  chairs, 
and  beds.  .  .  .  What  a  glorious  prospect  you  had  from  the 
windows  of  Sant'  Elmo!  The  enormous  chain  of  the 
Apennines,  with  its  many-folded  ridges,  islanded  in  the 
misty  distance  of  the  air  ;  the  sea,  so  immensely  distant, 
appearing  as  if  at  your  feet  ;  and  the  prodigious  e.xpanse  of 
the  plain  of  Pisa,  and  the  dark  green  marshes  lessened 
almost  to  a  strip  by  the  height  of  the  blue  marshes  over- 
hanging  them.  Then  the  wild  and  unreclaimed  fertility  of 
the  foreground,  and  the  chestnut-trees,  whose  vivid  foliage 
made  a  sort  of  resting-place  to  the  sense  before  it  darted 
itself  to  thejagged  horizon  of  this  prospect.  I  was  altogether 
delighted.  I  had  a  respite  from  my  nervous  symptoms, 
which  was  compensated  to  me  by  a  violent  cold  in  the  head. 
There  was  a  tradition  about  you  at  Sant'  Elmo— ««  English 
family  that  had  lived  here  in  the  time  of  the  Ernich. 

We  go  to  Bagni  next  month.  ...  I  am  undergoing  a 
course  ot  the  Pisan  baths,  on  which  I  lay  no  singular  stress 
—but  they  soothe.  I  ought  to  have  peace  of  mind,  leisure, 
tranquillity  ;  this  I  expect  soon.     Uur  anxiety  about  Godwin 


342    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

is  very  great,  and  any  information  that  you  could  give  a  day 
or  two  earlier  than  he  might,  respecting  any  decisive  event 
in  his  lawsuit,  would  be  a  great  relief.  Your  impres- 
sions about  Godwin  (I  speak  especially  to  Madonna  mia^ 
who  had  known  him  before)  will  especially  interest  me. 
You  know  that  added  years  only  add  to  my  admiration  of 
his  mtellectual  powers,  and  even  the  moral  resources  of  his 
character.  .  .  .  To  see  Hunt  is  to  like  him.  To  know 
Hogg,  if  any  one  can  know  him,  is  to  know  something  very 
unlike  and  inexpressibly  superior,  to  the  great  mass  of  men. 

This  charming  letter  was  written  in  Reveley's 
study,  and  may  serve  as  a  commentary  upon  the 
admirable  epistle  in  verse  which  Shelley  addressed 
shortly  afterwards  to  Maria  Gisborne — one  of 
the  gems  of  his  familiar  poetry  in  which  we  knew 
not  whether  to  admire  most  the  perfection  of  the 
descriptions,  the  exquisite  delicacy  of  the  sentiment 
or  the  incomparable  wit  and  humour  with  which 
the  poet  avails  himself  of  the  smallest  details. 
All  his  London  friends  are  named  in  it  with 
an  affectionate  regard  that  does  not  exclude 
impartiality  or  raillery. 

It  was  during  his  stay  at  Casa  Ricci  that,  one 
summer  evening  wandering  with  Mary  "  among  the 
lanes  whose  myrtle  hedges  were  the  bowers  of 
fire-flies,"  he  heard  the  song  of  the  skylark,  and 
instantly  interpreted  its  ideal  impression  in  one  of 
his  most  perfect  poems  : — his  salutation  to  the  bird, 
or  rather  to  the  blithe  spirit  disdainful  of  earth, 
whose  clear  and  piercing  strain  he  envies,  and 
would  fain  learn  how  to  teach  the  world  "such 
harmonious  madness." 

The  days  were  spent  pleasantly  at  Pisa  in  the 
study  of  Latin  and  Greek  with  Mary,  and  Shelley 
rendered  into  ottava  rima  the  Homeric  Hymn  to 
Mercury.  The  playful  tone  of  the  free  translation 
struck  a  new  vein  of  light-hearted  inspiration, 
which  soon  showed  itself  in  his  marvellously 
fanciful  "  Witch  of  Atlas." 

The   heat  of  Leghorn    in   August  had  forced 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY. 


343 


the  Shelleys  to  remove  to  the  Baths  of  San 
Giuliano,  near  Lucca,  and,  after  an  excursion  to 
Monte  San  Pellegrino,  he  wrote  in  three  days 
that  wonderful  poem  which  he  describes  as  en- 
tirely fanciful,  and,  if  its  merit  be  measured  by 
the  labour  it  cost,  absolutely  worthless.  In  his 
heart  Shelley  probably  preferred  this  fanciful  im- 
provisation to  his  more  laborious  productions 
such  as  "  The  Cenci."  It  is  a  fairy  tale,  but  such 
an  one  as  might  be  told  and  heard  by  pure  spirits 
— a  fairy  tale,  as  Mr.  Rossetti  says,  "  enchanting 
and  imperishable."  We  may  observe  with  the 
saipe  writer  that  a  clue  to  its  meaning  is  to  be 
found  if  we  understand  the  Witch  to  be  the  Spirit 
of  Beauty,  of  which  all  the  beauties  in  the  world  is 
but  a  shadow^  "  whose  words,  though  too  fine  to 
be  articulate  to  mortal  ear,  fill  us  with  a  longing 
for  all  high  truth;  whose  presence,  though  in- 
visible, quickens  within  us  all  hope  and  joy  and 
love.''  Here  we  must  pause,  nor  try  to  analyse 
that  which  refuses  to  be  analysed.  Painting  alone, 
and  painting  by  a  sylph  or  an  Ariel,  could  render 
something  of  that  divine  phantasy.  "■  What  an 
admirable  subject  for  Retsch  !  "  says  Medwin. 
"  A  second  '  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  V* 

It  seems  incredible  that  the  poet  who  had  just 
written  the  "  Witch  of  Atlas  ''  should  be  the  same 
man  who,  steadily  observing  the  political  state  of 
Europe,  suffered  no  symptom  of  that  awakening  of 
Liberty  among  his  contemporaries,  whose  ap- 
proaching triumph  he  foresaw,  to  escape  his 
notice.  The  year  1820  seemed  to  respond  to  that 
presentiment  :  in  the  south  of  Europe  the  spirit  of 
revolution  was  aroused.  Spain  gave  the  signal, 
and  the  flame  soon  spread  to  the  south  of  Italy,  to 
Naples,  and  Sicily.  The  poet's  heart  beat  in 
sympathy  with  all.     "  Sicily,  like  Naples,  is  free  !  " 

•  Retsch's  "  Outlines  to  Shakespeare's  Plays." 


344    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

he  wrote  to  Mary  (July  23rd) "  the  enthu- 
siasm of  the  inhabitants  was  prodigious  ;  the 
women  fought  from  the  houses,  raining  down 
boiling  oil  on  the  assailants."  And  in  September, 
*'  At  Naples  the  Constitutional  party  have  de- 
clared to  the  Austrian  Minister  that,  if  the 
Emperor  should  make  war  upon  them,  their  first 
action  would  be  to  put  to  death  all  the  members 
of  the  royal  family — a  necessary  and  most  just 
measure,  when  the  forces  of  the  combatants,  as 
well  as  the  merits  of  their  respective  causes,  are  so 
unequal.  That  kings  should  be  everywhere  the 
hostages  for  liberty — nothing  more  admirable!" 
In  the  fervour  of  his  revolutionary  enthusiasm 
Shelley  wrote  the  "Ode  to  Liberty'^  and  the. 
*'  Ode  to  Naples  ^'  successively. 

There  are  {ç:\^  lyrics  so  thrilling,  so  highly 
charged  with  passion  and  enthusiasm,  as  the 
**Ode  to  Liberty,"  in  which  Shelley  unrolls  before 
our  dazzled  gaze  the  history  of  the  victories  and 
defeats  of  that  "  virgin  huntress  swifter  than  the 
moon,''  and  "terror  of  the  world's  wolves." 
Athens,  Rome,  Arminius,  Christianity,  the  Saxon 
Alfred,  Luther,  Milton,  France  in  '93,  and  Napo- 
leon pass  in  succession  before  us,  leaving  the  world 
either  luminous  or  obscure,  according  as  Liberty 
casts  or  withholds  "  the  shadow  of  her  coming.'* 
A  like  passion  and  a  like  eloquence  are  breathed 
in  the  "  Ode  to  Naples."  The  poet  is  still  filled 
with  the  poetic  recollections  of  Pompeii  and  Baiae, 
of  "  the  unknown  graves  of  the  dead  kings  of 
melody"  (Homer  and  Virgil).  From  the  splen- 
dour of  the  Elysian  shores  he  rises  to  the  con- 
templation of  the  destiny  of  Naples,  of  her 
hoped-for  freedom — the  signal  eagerly  awaited  by 
the  whole  of  Italy  : 

Didst  thou  not  start  to  hear  Spain's  thrilling  paeaa 
From  land  to  land  re-echoed  solemnly, 

Till  silence  became  music  .''     From  the  /Ea^aii- 
To  the  cold  Alps,  eternal  Italy 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  345 

Starts  to  hear  thine  !     The  sea 
Which  paves  the  desert  streets  of  Venice  laughs 

In  hght  and  music  ;  widowed  Genoa  wan 
By  moonlight  spells  ancestral  epitaphs, 
Murmuring  "  Where  is  Uoria  ?"     Fair  Milan, 

Within  whose  veins  long  ran 
The  viper's  palsying  venom,  lifts  her  heel 
To  bruise  his  head.  .  .  . 

Florence,  beneath  the  sun, 

Of  cities  fairest  one, 
Blushes  within  her  bovver  for  freedom's  expectation  ; 

From  eyes  of  quenchless  hope 

Rome  tears  the  priestly  cope, 
As  ruling  once  by  power,  so  now  by  admiration — 

An  athlete  stripped  to  run 

From  a  remoter  station 
For  the  high  prize  lost  on  Philippi's  shore  ; 
As  then  Hope,  Truth,  and  Justice  did  avail. 

So  now  may  Fraud  and  Wrong  !     Oh,  hail  ! 

Austrian  bayonets  unhappily  soon  crushed  the 
Neapolitan  revolution.  Shelley  was  deeply  affected 
by  this  disaster,  and  was  indignant  that  his  friend 
Moore  could  applaud  it  in  verse  unworthy  of  a 
poet  and  an  Irishman. 

Should  Italy  ever  commemorate  her  resurrec- 
tion to  freedom  and  national  life  by  a  monument, 
she  would  be  ungrateful  indeed  did  she  not  place 
beside  the  names  of  her  warrior-heroes  that  of  the 
poet  who  sang  so  gloriously  of  her  hopes  and 
electrified  her  patriotism.  When  lyrical  poetry 
attains  to  such  a  height  and  power  as  his,  we  may 
pronounce  it  to  be,  as  Shelley  himself  said,  speak- 
ing out  of  the  very  faith  with  which  he  was 
inspired,  "a  prophecy  and  a  cause." 

While  Shelley  was  thus  pouring  forth  a  flood 
of  lyrical  verse  in  his  most  serious  and  eloquent 
vein,  the  tragi-comedy  then  being  played  in 
England,  with  Queen  Caroline  for  its  heroine, 
afforded  him  an  opportunity  of  exercising  the 
kind  of  talent  he  had  so  unexpectedly  disclosed 
in  "  Peter  Bell  the  Third  " — that  faculty  of  original 


346    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

and  powerful  irony,  that  spirit  of  comical  satire, 
burlesque  and  yet  poetical — a  mixture  hitherto 
unknown  in  the  incisiveness  of  Swift  and  the 
airiness  of  Aristophanes. 

The  ''  Œdipus  Tyrannus,"  like  "  Peter  Bell 
the  Third/'  was  merely  a  light  and  playful  impro- 
visation, but  it  was  an  improvisation  of  genius. 

One  day,  while  looking  at  some  extracts  from 
Le  Courrier  Français,  he  lighted  upon  a  strange 
and  astonishing  piece  of  news.  Queen  Caroline, 
on  hearing  of  the  death  of  George  III.,  had 
hastened  to  England.  Deserted  and  dishonoured 
by  the  grotesque  King,  George  IV.,  the  too 
notorious  Princess  was  about  to  claim  her  rights 
as  wife  and  queen.  The  result  is  well  known  ; 
the  story  of  the  long  and  shameful  suit  occupies 
the  whole  of  the  political  annals  of  England,  in 
1820.  Never  before  had  any  people  offered  so 
odious,  repulsive,  and  ridiculous  a  spectacle  to 
the  world  ;  it  alone  would  have  justified  all  the 
anathemas  heaped  by  Shelley  on  the  head  of 
Royalty. 

Long  before  this,  Shelley  had  formed  his 
opinion  of  George  IV.  ;  it  was  that  of  every 
thinking  Englishman  ;  it  was  that  which  Thackeray 
has  emphatically  expressed  in  his  "■  Four  Georges," 
"I  do  not  know  that  there  could  be  a  bitterer  satire 
on  English  society  at  that  period,  than  to  say 
it  was  able  to  admire  George  IV" 

In  common  with  many  others,  Shelley  had 
at  first  been  blinded  by  the  farce  of  Liberalism, 
acted  by  the  Prince  of  Wales  becoming  the 
friend  and  disciple  of  Fox  and  Sheridan  ;  he 
had  relied  for  a  moment  on  the  hopes  raised  by 
a  youth  who  shouted  for  ''  Wilkes  and  Liberty  !  " 
But  he  saw  behind  the  mask,  and  divined  from 
the  conduct  of  the  Regent  what  the  future  King 
of  England  would  be. 

In    "  Swellfoot   the  Tyrant,"  we  recognise  the 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  347 

historic  George  IV.,  of  the  memoirs  of  the  time; 
the  "base  fellow"  of  Lady  Hester  Stanhope,  the 
hero  of  the  dinner-table  and  of  dandyism,  the 
inventor  of  maraschino  punch,  the  fat,  crowned  fop, 
exclusively  engrossed,  amid  grave  European  events, 
with  the  cut  of  a  coat,  or  the  seasoning  of  a  dish. 
All  these  details,  taken  from  history,  are  invested 
with  heroic  and  gigantic  forms  and  proportions  in 
Shelley's  drama.  By  a  process  of  poetical  hyper- 
bole somewhat  analogous  to  that  of  Rabelais, 
George  IV.'  becomes  the  ideal  dandy,  glutton, 
and  tyrant  ;  the  ungrateful  friend  of  Sheridan 
and  Brummel  becomes  as  Swellfoot  (Œdipus) 
the  "Man-Milliner  to  red  Bellona,"  the  dainty 
epicure  is  transformed  into  a  Homeric  Gargantua, 
who  devours  in  a  single  plat,  devised  by  his 
Persian  cook,  what  would  suffice  to  feed  a  dozen 
families  for  a  winter  or  two  ;  the  sceptical  and 
fickle  Don  Juan,  whose  life  has  known  hardly  one 
real  passion  except  hatred  and  contempt  of  his 
wife,  becomes  a  tragical  George  Dandin,  a  victim 
of  the  jealous  divinity  who  "  waves  o'er  the  couch 
of  wedded  kings,  the  torch  of  Discord  with  its 
fiery  hair/'  the  famous  green  bag  laid  on  the  table 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  containing  the  proofs 
of  the  royal  adultery,  is  changed  into  a  terrible 
invention  of  Hell,  a  poison  more  mortal  than  death 
itself  "scaled  up  with  the  broad  seal  of  Fraud, 
who  is  the  Devil's  Lord  High  Chancellor,"  and 
baptized  by  "  the  Primate  of  all  Hell." 

In  order  to  idealise  Caroline  while  remaining 
true  to  History,  Shelley  had  only  to  depict  her  as 
the  credulous  and  enthusiastic  folly  of  the  populace 
of  London  saw  her.  But  he  was  no  dupe  of  the 
political  comedy  played  round  the  Queen  ;  he 
knew  very  well  that-  the  madcap  Princess,  who 
seemed  all  through  her  life  to  be  bent  on  the 
self-destruction  of  her  honour  and  her  reputation, 
had  always  been  a  despised  tool  in  the  hands  of 


348     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

the  Whigs,  a  puppet  of  the  Opposition  which  they 
would  fling  away  on  the  first  change  in  public 
opinion.  He  wrote  to  Peacock  in  this  sense,  July 
I2th: 

Nothing,  I  think,  shows  the  generous  gullibility  of  the 
English  nation  more  than  their  having  adopted  Her  Sacred 
Majesty  as  the  heroine  of  the  day,  in  spite  of  all  their 
prejudices  and  bigotry.  I,  for  my  part,  of  course  wish  no 
harm  to  happen  to  her,  even  if  she  has,  as  I  firmly  believe, 
amused  herself  in  a  manner  rather  indecorous  with  any 
courier  or  baron.  But  I  cannot  help  adverting  to  it  as  one 
of  the  absurdities  of  royalty,  that  a  vulgar  woman,  with  all 
those  low  tastes  which  prejudice  considers  as  vices,  and  a 
person  whose  habits  and  manners  every  one  would  shun  in 
private  life,  without  any  redeeming  virtues,  should  be  turned 
into  a  heroine  because  she  is  a  queen,  or,  as  a  collateral 
reason,  because  her  husband  is  a  king  ;  and  he,  no  less  than 
his  Ministers,  are  so  odious  that  everything,  however  dis- 
gusting, which  is  opposed  to  them  is  admirable. 

He  was  willing  to  believe  in  the  famous 
"  green  bag  '^  : 

"  I  wonder  what  in  the  world  the  Queen  has  done,"  he 
writes  at  the  beginning  of  this  tragi-comedy  ;  "'I  should 
not  wonder,  after  the  whispers  1  have  heard,  to  find  that  the 
green  bag  contained  evidence  that  she  had  imitated  Pasiphaë 
and  that  the  Committee  should  recommend  to  Parliament  a 
Bill  to  exclude  all  Minotaurs  from  the  succession.  What 
silly  stuff  is  this  to  employ  a  great  nation  about  !  I  wish 
the  King  and  the  Queen,  like  Punch  and  his  wife,  would 
fight  out  their  disputes  in  person." 

In  the  foregoing  lines  we  perceive  the  first 
conception  and  plan  of  "  Swellfoot  the  Tyrant." 
lona  Taurina,  the  Oueen,  the  new  Pasiphaë  (after 
long  wanderings  in  all  the  fabulous  jcountries  to 
which  i^schylus  sends  the  unhappy  lo),  stung  and 
harassed  by  the  same  gadfly,  returns  to  Thebes 
where  the  husband  and  wife  settle  their  edifying" 
differences  by  a  solemn  and  decisive  trial. 

How  did  Shelley  conceive  the  idea  of  the 
Aristophanic  chorus  which  represents  the  Theban, 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  349 

that    is,    the    EngUsh    people  ?      From    a    mere 
coincidence. 

"We  were  then"  (August,  1820),  writes  Mrs.  Shelley,  "at 
the  Baths  of  San  Giuliano  ;  a  friend  came  to  visit  us  on  the 
day  when  a  fair  was  held  in  the  square,  beneath  our  windows. 
Shelley  read  to  us  his  'Ode  of  Liberty'  and  was  riotously 
accompanied  by  the  gruntnig  of  a  quantity  of  pigs  brought 
for  sale  to  the  fair.  He  compared  it  to  the  'Chorus  of 
Frogs'  in  the  satiric  drama  of  Aristophanes  ;  and  it  being  an 
hour  of  merriment,  and  one  ludicrous  association  suggesting 
another,  he  imagined  a  political  satirical  drama  on  the 
circumstances  of  the  day,  to  which  the  pigs  would  serve  as 
■chorus  ;  and  Swellfoot  was  begun." 

The  notion  of  representing  the  English  people 
under  the  form  of  the  most  selfish  and  ease- 
loving  of  animals  must  have  amused  Shelley. 
As  he  makes  one  of  the  characters  say  :  "  How 
can  I  find  a  more  appropriate  term,"  than  pig- 
gisliness,  "to  include  religion,  morals,  peace, 
and  plenty, 

And  all  that  fit  Bastia  as  a  nation 

To  teach  the  other  nations  how  to  live  ?  " 

Had  not  Burke,  that  oracle  of  Anglican  cant, 
said  that  an  Englishman  is,  above  all,  "  a  religious 
animal  .■•  "  Had  he  not  compared  Revolutionists 
to  a  handful  of  grasshoppers  hidden  in  the 
heather,  while  millions  of  fine  beasts  repose  in 
the  shade  of  the  British  oak,  and  ruminate  in 
silence  t  To  repair  somewhat  the  irreverence 
of  his  first  metamorphosis,  the  poet  invented 
another  ;  the  pigs  of  every  caste  and  kind  were 
transformed  at  the  close  of  the  piece  into  bulls, 
the  "  fine  beasts  "  of  Burke,  and  by  a  fantastic 
etymology,  the  Ionian  Minotaur  becomes  the 
legendary  founder  of  a  people  who  take  pride 
in  their  nickname  of  John  Bull. 

Shelley  could  not  fail  to  depict  the  advisers 
and  ministers  of  George  IV.'s  disastrous  reign, 
under  hideous  and  grinning  masks.     A  Welling- 


350    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

ton,  a  Castlereagh,  an  Eldon,  a  Sidmouth  ;  each 
of  these  courtiers  is  indehbly  branded.  Nothing 
could  be  more  comically  strange  or  more  poeti- 
cally comic,  than  the  lasting  contrast  between 
these  modern  characters,  alike  odious  and  gro- 
tesque, and  the  Greek  garments  in  which  they 
are  dressed  up,  uttering,  in  the  language  of  gods 
and  Homeric  heroes,  the  most  absurd  sophistry, 
the  wildest  folly  ;  nothing  more  irresistibly  droll 
than  the  mingling  of  the  manners  and  oddities 
of  modern  England,  of  the  John  Bull  of  Arbuthnot, 
with  the  most  graceful  and  fantastic  traditions  of 
ancient  mythology. 

The  present  time,  which  may  be  called  the 
age  of  parody,  may  bow  down  before  Shelley,  and 
acknowledge  in  him  the  Shakespeare  of  the  art. 

In  July,  1820,  Shelley  was  deeply  affected 
by  the  receipt  of  sad  news.  John  Keats  was 
dying  of  consumption  at  the  age  of  twenty-five. 
On  June  22nd  he  had  broken  a  blood-vessel,  and 
the  end  was  near. 

On  hearing  this,  Shelley  wrote  to  him  from 
Pisa  on  July  27th,   1820  : 

My  dear  Keats, 

I  hear  with  great  pain  the  dangerous  accident  you 
have  undergone,  and  Mr.  Gisborne,  who  gives  me  the 
account  of  it,  adds  that  you  continue  to  wear  a  consumptive 
appearance.  This  consumption  is  a  disease  particularly 
fond  of  people  who  write  such  good  verses  as  you  have 
done,  and  with  the  assistance  of  an  English  winter  it  can 
often  indulge  its  selection.  I  do  not  think  that  young  and 
amiable  poets  are  bound  to  gratify  its  taste  ;  they  have 
entered  into  no  bond  with  the  Muses  to  that  effect.  But 
seriously  (for  I  am  joking  on  what  I  am  very  anxious  about), 
I  think  you  would  do  well  to  pass  the  winter  in  Italy  and 
avoid  so  tremendous  an  accident,  and  if  you  think  it  as 
necessary  as  I  do,  so  long  as  you  continue  to  find  Pisa  or 
its  neighbourhood  agreeable  to  you,  Mrs.  Shelley  unites  with 
myself  in  urging  the  request  that  you  would  take  up  your 
residence  with  us.  You  might  come  by  sea  to  Leghorn 
(France  is  not  worth  seeing,  and  the  sea  is  particularly  good 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  351 

for  weak  lungs),  which  is  within  a  few  miles  of  us.  You 
ought,  at  all  events,  to  see  Italy,  and  your  health,  which  I 
suggest  as  a  motive,  may  be  an  excuse  to  you.  I  spare 
declamation  about  the  statues,  and  paintings,  and  ruins,  and, 
what  is  a  greater  piece  of  forbearance,  about  the  mountains 
and  streams,  the  fields,  the  colours  of  the  sky,  and  the  sky 
itself. 

I  have  lately  read  your  "Endymion"  again,  and  even 
with  a  new  sense  of  the  treasures  of  poetry  it  contains, 
though  treasures  poured  forth  with  indistinct  profusion. 
This  people  in  general  will  not  endure,  and  that  is  the 
cause  of  the  comparatively  few  copies  which  have  been 
sold.  I  feel  persuaded  that  you  are  capable  of  the  greatest 
things,  so  you  but  will.  I  always  tell  Oilier  to  send  you 
copies  of  my  books.  "  Prometheus  Unbound,"  I  imagine  you 
will  receive  nearly  at  the  same  time  with  this  letter.  "The 
Cenci  "  I  hope  you  have  already  received— it  was  studi- 
ously composed  in  a  different  style.  ...  In  poetry  I  have 
sought  to  avoid  system  and  mannerism.  I  wish  those  who 
excel  me  in  genius  would  pursue  the  same  plan. 

Whether  you  remain  in  England,  or  journey  to  Italy, 
believe  that  you  carry  with  you  my  anxious  wishes  for 
your  health,  happiness,  and  success,  wherever  you  are,  or 
whatever  you  undertake,  and  that  I  am, 

Yours  sincerely, 

P.  B.  Shelley. 


Keats  answered  this  affectionate  invitation  as  a 
friend  and  as  a  poet: 

Hampstead,  August  loth,  1S20. 
My  dear  Shelley, 

I  am  very  much  gratified  that  you,  in  a  foreign 
country,  and  with  a  mind  almost  over-occupied,  should  write 
to  me  in  tlie  strain  of  the  letter  beside  me.  If  I  do  not 
take  advantage  of  your  invitation,  it  will  be  prevented  by 
a  circumstance  I  have  very  much  at  heart  to  prophesy. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  an  English  winter  would  put  an 
end  to  me,  and  do  so  in  a  lingering,  hateful  manner.  There- 
fore, I  must  either  voyage  or  journey  to  Italy,  as  a  soldier 
marches  up  to  a  battery.  ...  I  am  glad  you  take  any  pleasure 
in  my  poor  poem,  which  I  would  willingly  take  the  trouble  to 
unwrite,  if  possible,  did  I  care  so  much  as  I  have  done  about 
reputation.  I  received  a  copy  of  "The  Cenci,"  as  from  yourself, 
from  Hunt.  There  is. only  one  part  of  it  I  am  judge  of— the 
poetry  and  dramatic  effect,  which  by  many  spirits  nowadays 
is  considered  the  Mammon.    A  modern   work,  it  is  said, 


352     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

must  have  a  purpose,  which  may  be  the  god.  An  artist  must 
serve  Mammon  ;  he  must  have  "  self-concentration  " — selfish- 
ness, perhaps.  You,  I  am  sure,  will  forgive  me  for  sincerely 
remarking  that  you  might  curb  your  magnanimity,  and  be 
more  of  an  artist,  and  load  every  rift  of  your  subject  with 
ore.  The  thought  of  such  discipline  must  fall  like  cold 
chains  upon  you,  who  perhaps  never  sat  with  your  wings 
furled  for  six  months  together.  And  is  not  this  extraordinary 
talk  for  the  writer  of  "Endymion," whose  mindwas  like  a  pack 
of  scattered  cards  ?  I  am  picked  up  and  sorted  to  a  pip. 
My  imagination  is  a  monastery,  and  I  am  its  monk.  I  am 
in  expectation  of  "Prometheus"  everyday.  Could  I  have  my 
own  wish  effected,  you  would  have  it  still  in  manuscript,  or  be 
but  now  putting  an  end  to  the  second  act.  I  remember  you 
advising  me  not  to  publish  my  first  flights,  on  Hampstead 
Heath.  I  am  returning  advice  upon  your  hands.  Most  of 
the  poems  in  the  volume  I  send  you  have  been  written  above 
two  years,  and  would  never  have  been  published  but  for 
hope  of  gain  ;  so  you  see  I  am  inclined  enough  to  take  your 
advice  now.  I  must  express  once  more  my  deep  sense  of 
your  kindness,  adding  my  sincere  thanks  and  respects  for 
Mrs.  Shelley.     In  the  hope  of  soon  seeing  you, 

I  remain,  most  sincerely  yours, 

John  Keats. 

It  is  very  touching  to  see  the  rival  poets  thus 
ingenuously  communicating  to  each  other  their 
impressions  and  their  criticisms,  and  each  ap- 
parently more  anxious  for  the  other^s  fame  than 
for  his  own.  The  fiery  ardour  of  Shelley  forbade 
him  to  follow  the  counsels  of  his  laborious  and 
precise  friend.  He  was  a  worker  on  an  heroic 
scale,  a  painter  of  frescoes — not  a  carver  or  a 
miniature-painter.  He  did  not  understand  the 
"  Perseus  "  of  Benvenuto  Cellini  ;  according  to  him 
the  poet  or  the  artist  should  not  work  beyond  the 
precise  moment  of  inspiration;  the  "polissez  et 
repolissez"  of  Boileau,  and  the  "  slow,  dull  care''  of 
KeatSj  seemed  to  him  absurdity.  He  deemed  the 
patient  labour  of  the  file  incompatible  with 
strength,  naturalness,  or  effect. 

The  new  collection  of  poems  which  Keats  had 
announced,  realised  to  a  certain   extent  the  ex- 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  353 

pectations  he  had  formed  on  reading  "Endymion." 
Immediately  on  reading  it  he  wrote  to  Peacock 
(November  8th,  1820)  : 

Amon^  the  modern  things  that  have  reached  me,  is  a 
volume  of  poems  by  Keats;  in  other  respects  insignificant 
enough,  but  containing  the  fragment  of  a  poem  called 
"Hyperion."  I  dare  say  you  have  not  time  to  read  it  ;  but 
it  is  certainly  an  astonishing  piece  of  writing,  and  gives  me  a 
conception  of  Keats  which  I  confess  I  h  xd  not  before. 

In  his  enthusiastic  admiration  of  that  wonderful 
fragment,  indignant  at  the  bitter  and  unjust  review 
of  Keats's  earlier  poems  in  the  Quarterly  Review, 
and  exaggerating  the  effect  which  must  be  pro- 
duced on  a  sensitive  and  delicate  organisation  by 
such  hostile  criticism,  he  writes  to  the  editor  of  the 
Review  in  which  the  article  appeared,  as  follows  : 

The  wretch  who  wrote  it  has  doubtless  the  additional 
reward  of  a  consciousness  of  his  motives,  besides  the  thirty 
guineas  a  sheet,  or  whatever  it  is  that  you  pay  him.  ...  I 
am  not  in  the  habit  of  permitting  myselt'  to  be  disturbed  by 
what  is  said  or  written  of  me,  though  I  dare  say  I  may 
be  condemned  sometimes  justly  enough.  .  .  .  The  case  is 
different  with  the  unfortunate  subject  of  this  letter,  the  author 
of  "Endymion"  .  .  .  and  .  .  .  if  it  is  Mr.  Gifford  that  I  am 
addressing,  I  am  persuaded  that  in  an  appeal  to  his  hum  inity 
and  justice,  he  will  acknowledge  \.\iÇ.Jas  ab  hoste  doccri.  .  .  . 

Poor  Keats  was  thrown  into  a  dreadful  state  of  mind  by 
this  review,  which,  I  am  persuaded,  was  not  written  with  any 
intention  of  producing  the  effect,  to  which  it  has  at  least 
greatly  contributed,  of  embittering  his  existence,  and  inducing 
a  disease  from  which  there  are  now  but  faint  hopes  of  his 
recovery.  The  fust  effects  are  described  to  me  to  have 
resembled  insanity,  and  it  was  by  assiduous  watching  that 
he  was  restrained  from  effecting  purposes  of  suicide.  'I  he 
agony  of  his  sufferings  at  length  produced  the  rupture  of  a 
blood-vessel  in  the  lungs,  and  the  usual  process  of  con- 
sumption appears  to  have  begun.  He  is  coming  to  pay  me 
a  visit  in  Italy  ;  but  I  fear  that  unless  his  mind  can  be  kept 
tranquil,  little  is  to  be  hoped  from  the  mere  influence  of 
climate. 

But  let  me  not  extort  anything  from  your  pity.  I  have 
just  seen  a  second  volume,  published  by  him  evidently  in 
careless    despair.  .  .  .  Allow    me   to   solicit    your  especial 

2    A 


354    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

attention  to  the  fragment  of  a  poem  entitled  "  Hyperion," 
the  composition  of  which  was  checked  by  the  Review  in 
question.  The  great  proportion  of  this  piece  is  surely  in  the 
very  highest  style  of  poetry.*  I  speak  impartially,  for  the 
canons  of  taste  to  which  Keats  has  conformed  in  his  other 
compositions,  are  the  very  reverse  of  my  own.  I  leave  you 
to  judge  for  yourself  ;  it  would  be  an  insult  to  you  to  suppose 
that,  from  motives  however  honourable,  you  would  lend  your- 
self to  a  deception  of  the  public. 

Shelley,  as  we  see  by  the  foregoing  letter, 
cherished  no  false  hopes  concerning  Keats's  re- 
covery, and  it  was  with  no  surprise,  albeit  with 
keenest  sorrow,  that  a  few  months  later  he  heard 
of  his  death.  They  had  not  met  again.  The 
author  of  "  Hyperion  "  died  at  Rome  on  February 
23rd,  1821,  tended  by  a  devoted  friend,  Mr.  Severn, 
the  artist,  who  watched  over  him  to  the  last  with 
the  truest  tenderness.  Shelley  regretted  that  he 
knew  of  that  touching  devotion  too  late  to  allude 
to  it  in  the  elegy  which  he  consecrated  to  the 
memory  of  his  friend.  This  poem  alone,  the 
""Adonais,"t  would  suffice  to  render  the  in- 
separably linked  names  of  Shelley  and  Keats 
immortal.  We  cannot  read  it  without  being 
deeply  moved  by  the  melancholy  with  which 
Shelley  predicts  his  own  fate,  and  seems  to  fore- 
bode the  impending  tragedy  which  is  destined  to 
unite  him  to  his  friend. 

Towards  the   end  of  October,   1820,   Shelley 

*  Byron,  who  could  not  forgive  Keats  for  having  depre- 
ciated Pope,  and  set  himself  up  as  a  law-giver  in  Parnassus 
while  he  was  as  yet  but  a  school-boy  poet,  and  who  had 
bitterly  ridiculed  him  in  1820,  made  amends  for  this  after  the 
death  of  the  poet.  His  judgment  is  inspired  by  thai  of 
Shelley  ;  he  declares  Keats  to  have  been  a  genius  of  great 
promise,  and  says  that  his  fragment,  "  Hyperion,"  seems  to 
be  directly  inspired  by  the  Titans,  and  is  as  sublime  as 
^schylus. 

t  "  Adonais"  was  not  completed  until  June,  1821. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  355 

"vvas  driven  from  the  Baths  of  San  Giuh'ano  by  an 
inundation  of  the  canal  between  the  Serchio  and 
the  Arno  ;  the  water  invaded  his  house,  and  he 
returned  to  Pisa,  taking  up  his  winter  quarters  at 
Casa  Galetti,  with  Medwin^  whom  he  had  not  seen 
since  18 13.  The  latter,  after  long  wanderings, 
including  a  voyage  to  Bombay,  where  he  had 
bought  a  copy  of  "  Laon  and  Cythna  ''  for  the 
price  of  the  paper  on  which  it  was  printed,  had 
joined  his  friend  in  Italy.  He  has  written  the 
most  interesting  particulars  of  the  literary  life  of 
the  poet  during  his  residence  at  Pisa  in  the  winter 
of  1820-21.  He  describes  him  as  full  of  projects 
of  poems,  studying  Arabic  with  his  cousin,  with  a 
view  to  future  travels  through  Syria  and  Egypt, 
delighting  more  and  more  in  the  Greeks  and  the 
Spaniards,  improvising,  for  Medwin's  benefit,  a 
translation  of  the  ''Prometheus''  of  ^schylus, 
and  luxuriating  in  the  light  and  perfume  of  "the 
golden  and  starry  Autos"  of  Calderon  ;  purposing 
to  write  a  version  in  terza  riuia  of  Dante's  Epic  ; 
and  reading  with  admiration  Manzoni's  "  Promessi 
Sposi."  He  considered  the  description  of  the 
plague  at  Milan,  to  be  "  far  superior  to  those  of 
De  Foe  or  Thucydides."  They  also  read  together 
Schiller's  tragedy  of  ''Joan  of  Arc."  The  chief 
merit  of  this  work  in  Shelley's  eyes  was  that  it 
treated  the  Christian  religion  as  a  mythology,  and 
he  said  that  a  hundred  years  hence  it  would  be 
more  admired  than  now. 

At  times,  however,  in  the  midst  of  these  pure 
delights,  Shelley  would  give  way  to  a  dark 
melancholy,  "too  sacred,"  says  Mcdwin,  "to  notice, 
and  which  it  would  have  been  a  vain  attempt  to 
dissipate."  At  other  times,  when  his  features 
bore  the  impress  of  suffering,  his  spirit  was  lost 
in  reverie,  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
exterior  world,  and  dissolved,  as  it  were,  into 
Nature. 

2    A    2 


356     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

"  More  than  once,"  continues  Medwin,  "  I  have  remarked 
something  of  this  in  Shelley,  as  we  stood  watching  from  my 
open  window  in  the  upper  part  of  the  house  the  sunsets  of 
Pisa,  which  are  gorgeous  beyond  any  I  have  ever  witnesse'd, 
when  the  waters,  the  sky,  and  the  marble  palaces  that  line 
the  magnificent  crescent  of  the  Lung'  Arno  were  glowing 
with  crimson — the  river  a  flood  of  molten  gold— and  I  seem 
now  to  follow  its  course  towards  the  Ponte  al  Mare,  till  the 
eye  rested  on  the  Torre  del  Fame,  that  frowned  in  dark 
relievo  on  the  horizon.  On  such  occasions,  after  one  of  these 
reveries,  he  would  forget  himself,  lost  in  admiration,  and 
exclaim  :  '  What  a  glorious  world  !  There  is,  after  all^ 
something  worth  living  for.  This  makes  me  retract  the  wish 
that  I  had  never  been  born.'  " 

At  such  times  he  forgot  the  bitter  thoughts 
which  had  made  him  write  :  "  I  am  regarded 
by  all  who  know  or  Jiear  of  me,  except,  I 
think,  on  the  whole  five  individuals,  as  a  rare 
prodigy  of  crime  and  pollution,  whose  look  even 
might  infect.  This  is  a  large  computation,  and  I 
don't  think  I  could  mention  more  than  three." 

Even  in  Italy  his  kind  fellow-countrymens 
missed  no  opportunity  of  freshly  opening  the 
wound.  There  is  a  story  that  at  the  Pisa  Post 
Office  an  English  officer  said  to  him,  "  So  you 
are  that  damned  Atheist  Shelley }  "  and  struck 
him  with  his  cane. 

The  varied  and  agreeable  social  relations 
formed  by  Shelley  during  his  second  residence 
at  Pisa,  were  some  consolation  for  the  contempt 
and  rudeness  of  his  own  countrymen.  We  find 
him  at  Casa  Galetti  surrounded  by  such  clevej- 
and  noticeable  persons  as  Pacchiani,  Emilia 
Viviani,  Mavrocordato,  Taaffe  (the  translator  and 
commentator  of  Dante),  and  Sgricci  the  impro- 
visatore  ;  there  for  the  first  time  he  enjoyed  the 
society  of  a  chosen  and  select  circle  which  he 
was  so  well  fitted  to  appreciate.  Two  of  his 
most  beautiful  works,  the  "  Epipsychidion  "  and 
"  Hellas,"  were  written  under  these  propitious 
circumstances. 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

Slir.LLEY  IN  ITALY  —  PISA  AND  RAVENNA  — 
EMILIA  VIVIANI  AND  THE  "  EPIPSVCHÏDION  " 
— "A  DEFENCE  OF  POETRY" — "  HELLAS" — 
"CHARLES   I."— 1 82  I. 

On  March  21st,  1821,  Shelley  wrote  to  Peacock: 
'"I  have  made  the  acquaintance  at  Pisa,  in  an 
obscure  convent,  of  the  only  Italian  in  whom 
I  have  ever  felt  any  interest/' 

This  was  the  young  and  beautiful  Contessina 
Emilia  Viviani,  she  who  inspired  the  "Epipsy- 
chidion."  Since  the  preceding  autumn,  Shelley 
liad  been  intimate  Avith  a  certain  Abbé  Pacchiani, 
Professor  at  the  University  of  Pisa  and  chaplain 
in  the  family  of  Count  Viviani. 

Pacchiani  was  a  typical  abbé  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  a  fit  opponent  of  Voltaire  or  Diderot. 
Medwin  gives  us  an  amusing  sketch  of  the 
man  : 

Pacchiani  was  about  fifty  years  of  age,  somewhat  above 
the  common  height,  with  a  figure  bony  and  angular,  and 
covered  with  no  more  superfluous  flesh  than  a  prize-fighter. 
His  face  was  dark  as  that  of  a  Moor,  his  features  marked 
.and  regular,  his  eyes  black  and  gloomy.  He  always  re- 
minded me  of  one  of  Titian's  portraits  (his  family  had  been 
Venetians)  stepping  out  of  its  frame.  Had  he  lived  when 
Venice  was  governed  by  the  Tré,  he  would  have  made  a 
Loredano,   and   might   have    sate  to   Anne    Radcliffe  for  a 


358     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET, 

Scbedoni  ;  but,  to  descend  to  modern  times,  during  the- 
reign  of  Austrian  despotism  he  was  admirably  calculated 
for  a  spy,  or  calderaio — perhaps  he  might  be  one.  "  CJii 
lo  sa  ?"  Nature  certainly  never  designed  him  for  a  divine. 
As  to  his  religion,  it  was  about  on  a  par  with  that  of  II 
Abbate  Casti  {Casti  a  iioii  cas/o,  as  hiacs  à  7ion  htcendo),  of 
whom  he  was  afterwards  a  worthy  successor,  in  his  native 
city,  F"lorence.  But  at  Pisa,  //  Sis,nore  Professore  was  the 
title  by  which  he  was  generally  known — a  professor,  like 
many  other  professors  and  lecturers,  at  least  in  Italy,  who 
had  made  a  sinecure  of  his  office,  that  of  belles  lettres^  and 
only  mounted  the  cathedra  once  during  the  many  years  that 
he  touched  his  poor  emoluments;  for  the  Transalpine 
universities  are  not  quite  so  richly  endowed  as  our  own. 
Not  that  this  neglect  of  his  duties  would  have  affected  his 
appointment,  but,  as  he  told  me,  he  lost  it  by  an  irresistible 
ho7i  mot.  During  one  of  his  midnight  orgies,  which  he  was 
in  the  habit  of  celebrating  with  some  of  the  most  dissolute 
of  the  students,  he  was  interrogated  in  the  darkness  by  the 
patrol  in  the  streets  of  Pisa,  as  to  who  and  what  he  was  ;  to 
which  questioning  he  gave  the  following  reply  :  "  Son'  un 
uomo  publico,  in  una  strada  publica,  con  una  donna  publica." 
This  public  avowal  cost  him  his  chair.  But  it  gave  him 
éclat,  and  did  not  lose  him  his  friends,  or  exclude  him  from 
the  houses  where  he  was  the  spiritual  guide  and  confessor. 
There  were,  it  is  true,  two  reasons  why  he  was  tolerated  in 
good  society  (which  Casti  says  is  to  be  found  where  he  places 
Don  Juan,  below) — his  pen  and  his  tongue — the  dread  of 
both.  His  epigrams  were  sanglantes,  and  he  gave  sobriqtiets 
the  most  happy  for  those  who  offended  him  ;  as  an  instance 
of  which,  he  most  happily  styled  a  captain  of  our  Navy 
it  dolce  capitano — a  bye-word  that  stuck  to  him  through  life, 
and  always  excited  a  smile  at  his  expense  whenever  he 
appeared.  He  was  a  good  poet,  if  one  might  judge  from  the 
quotations  he  was  in  the  habit  of  making  from  his  tragedies, 
which  he  continually  talked  about,  and  which  Madame 
de  Staël,  who  knew  him,  used  to  call  his  imagmary  ones,  for 
not  a  line  of  them  was  ever  published — perhaps  written. 
His  talent  was  conversation — a  conversation  full  of  repartee 
and  sparkling  with  wit  ;  and  his  information  (he  was  a  man 
of  profound  erudition,  vast  memory,  and  first-rate  talent) 
made  him  almost  oracular.  Shelley,  when  Pacchiani  first 
became  an  habitué  at  his  house,  was  charmed  with  him,  and. 
listened  with  rapt  attention  to  his  eloquence,  which  he 
compared  to  that  of  Coleridge.  It  was  a  swarm  of  ideas 
singularly  extravagant,  but  which  he  contrived  to  weave  into 
his  argument  with  marvellous  embroidery.  Now  he  plunged 
into  abysses  but  to  lighten  other  abysses  ;  and  his  words,. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  359 

like  a  torrent — for  there  was  no  stopping  Jiim  when  fairly- 
rushing  onwards — carried  all  before  them. 

It  was  this  gift  of  eloquence  that  made  him  for  a  time 
welcome  at  Shelley's,  where  he  passed  many  an  evening  in 
the  week  (I  think  I  see  him  now,  dissecting  the  snipes  with 
his  long,  bony,  snuffy  fingers — for  he  never  in  the  operation 
made  use  of  a  knife  or  fork)  ;  at  first  I  say,  for  he  had  in  the 
outset  sufficient  tact  (no  one  knew  mankind  better)  to  keep 
in  the  background  the  revolting  vices  which  were  familiar  to 
him  and  disfigured  his  character.  He  had  a  predilection 
for  our  compntriotes,  with  and  without  the  e,  but  particularly 
patronised  the  Belle  /ji^lese,  as  he  always  called  English 
women  ;  and  after  the  Italian  fashion,  soon  familiarly  called 
Mrs.  Shelley,  La  Signora  Maria.  Wherever  he  once  got 
the  entrée,  he  was  a  sitie  qua  tion,  a  fa  toul.  He  had  always 
some  poor  devil  of  low  origin  to  recommend  as  a  master  of 
his  language,  receiving,  under  the  rose,  part  of  the  lesson 
money.  He  was  never  at  a  loss  to  find  some  Palazzo  to  be 
let,  getting  a  monthly  douceur  out  of  the  rent  from  the  land- 
lord ;  for  a  picture  fancier,  he  had  always  at  hand  some 
mysterious  Marchese  or  Marchesa,  ready  to  part  with  a  Carla 
Dolce,  or  Andrea  del  Sarto,  or  M\ox\—origi?!als  of  course. 
He  could  dilate  for  hours  on  the  Venus  of  the  Tribune,  the 
Day  and  Night  of  Michael  Angelo,  the  Niobe  ;  knew  the 
history  of  every  painter  and  painting  in  the  galleries  of  the 
Uffizii  and  Pitti  better  than  Vasari,  or  his  successor  Rosini  %. 
in  short,  he  was  a  Mezzano,  Cicerone,  Conosciatore,  Dilettante, 
and  I  might  add,  Kuffiano.  Mrs.  Shelley  has  sketched  him 
in  her  "  Valperga." 

Some  years  later,  Medwin  again  met  with 
Pacchiani  at  Florence.  He  was  reduced  to  abject 
poverty,  had  been  imprisoned  for  debt,  but  was 
more  than  ever  a  Diavolo  iiicarnato. 

In  the  course  of  conversation  with  Shelley  the 
abbé  mentioned  to  him  two  young  daughters  of 
the  Count,  who,  on  tiieir  father's  second  marriage^ 
had  been  placed  in  separate  convents.  He  dwelt 
principally  on  the  elder,  Emilia,  who  for  two  years 
had  been  in  the  Convent  of  St.  Anna,  awaiting  a 
husband  who  would  take  her  without  dowry. 

"Poverina,"  said  Pacchiani,  ''she  pines  like  a 
bird  in  a  cage — ardently  longs  to  escape  from  her 
prison-house — pines  with  ennui,  and  wanders  about 
the  corridors  like  an  unquiet  spirit  ;  she  sees  her 


360     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

young  days  glide  on  without  an  aim  or  purpose- 
She  was  made  for  love.  Yesterday  she  was 
watering  some  flowers  in  her  cell^she  has  nothing 
to  love  but  her  flowers — 'Yes/  said  she,  addres- 
sing them,  'you  are  born  to  vegetate,  but  we 
thinking  beings  were  made  for  action — not  to  be 
penned  up  in  a  corner,  or  set  at  a  window  to 
bloom  and  die.'  " 

Such  words  as  these  found  a  responsive  echo 
in  Shelley's  heart. 

"  The  next  day,"  continues  Medwin,  "  accompanied  by 
the  priest,  we  came  in  sight  of  the  gloomy  dark  convent, 
whose  ruinous  and  dilapidated  condition  told  too  plainly  of 
confiscation  and  poverty.  It  was  situated  in  an  unfrequented 
street  in  the  suburbs,  not  far  from  the  walls.  After  passing 
through  a  gloomy  portal,  that  led  to  a  quadrangle,  the  area 
of  which  was  crowded  with  crosses,  memorials  of  old 
monastic  times,  we  were  soon  in  the  presence  of  Emilia.  .  .  . 

Emilia  was  indeed  lovely  and  interesting.  Her  profuse 
black  hair,  tied  in  the  most  simple  knot,  after  the  manner  of 
a  Greek  Muse  in  the  Florence  gallery,  displayed  to  its  full 
height  her  brow,  fair  as  that  marble  of  which  I  speak.  She 
was  also  about  the  same  height  as  the  antique.  Her  features 
possessed  a  rare  faultlessness,  and  almost  Grecian  contour, 
the  nose  and  forehead  making  a  straight  line  .  .  .  her  eyes 
had  the  sleepy  voluptuousness,  if  not  the  colour  of  Beatrice 
Cenci's.  They  had  indeed  no  definite  colour,  changing  with 
the  changing  feeling  to  dark  or  light  as  the  soul  animated 
them.  Her  cheek  was  pale  too  as  marble,  owing  to  her 
confinement  and  want  of  air,  and  perhaps  to  thought. 

There  was  a  lark  in  the  parloir  that  had  lately  been 
caught.  "Poor  prisoner  !  "  said  she,  looking  at  it  compas- 
sionately, "you  will  die  of  grief!  How  I  pity  thee  !  What 
must  thou  suffer  when  thou  hearest  in  the  clouds  the  songs 
of  thy  parent  l)irds,  or  some  flocks  of  thy  kind  on  the  wing, 
in  search  of  other  skies,  of  new  fields,  of  new  delights  !  But, 
like  me,  thou  wilt  be  forced  to  remain  here  always,  to  wear 
out  thy  miserable  existence  here.  V/hy  can  I  not  release 
thee  ?  .  .  .  " 

Such  was  the  impression  of  the  only  visit  I  paid  Emilia  ; 
but  I  saw  her  some  weeks  after,  at  the  end  of  a  Carnival, 
when  she  had  obtained  leave  to  visit  Mrs.  Shelley,  com- 
panioned by  the  abbess.  I"n  spite  of  the  Contessina's  efforts 
to  assume  cheerfulness,  one  might  see  she  was  very,  very 
sad  ;  but  she  made  no  complaint.  She  had  grown  used  to 
suffering  ;  it  had  become  her  element. 


SHELLEY  LY  ITALY.  361 

Claire  and  Mary  frequently  visited  her  at  the 
convent,  and  lent  her  books,  such  as  "  Corinne," 
"La  Nouvelle  Héloïse,^'  etc.  Claire  began  to 
teach  her  English.  Shelley  often  wrote  to  her, 
and  together  with  gifts  of  flowers  wet  with  her 
tears,*  received  from  her  in  answer  letters  full 
of  melancholy  and  despair.  While  Mary  was 
for  Emilia  her  "dearest  sister/'  Shelley  became 
the  "  beloved  brother/'  the  "  scnsibile  Percy,"  the 
"'  ad  or  at  0  sposo," 

On  one  occasion  she  writes  to  him  as  follows  : 

This  evening  I  wish  to  tell  you  many  things,  but  my  vigilant 
and  importunate  Ar^iis  has  hindered  me  from  so  doing.  I  will 
now  tell  you  a  part  of  them.  You  console  me  by  engaging 
yourseit  to  effect  my  liberation.  Here  I  fare  ill,  both  in 
spirits  and  health,  and  suffer  very  much  in  every  way,  so 
that  by  taking  me  from  here  you  would  give  me  a  new 
existence.  I  leave  the  /una  to  you,  who  have  that  experience 
and  that  wisdom  in  which  1  am  wanting.  .  .  .  Ah,  God 
pardon  my  mother!  She  could  make  me  contented,  if  not 
happy,  and,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  she  who  is  the  chief  cause 
of  my  misfortunes.  I  love  her  still,  and  wish  her  every  good. 
I  feel  that  Nature  speaks  and  lives  in  my  heart.  Although  she 
forgets  that  she  is  my  mother,  I  remember  that  1  am  her 
■daugliter.  .  .  .  You  say  that  my  liberation  will  periiaps 
■diviae  us.  O  my  friend  !  my  soul,  my  heart  can  never  be 
parted  from  my  brother,  from  my  dear  sisters  !  My  person, 
once  delivered  from  this  prison,  will  attempt  all  things  in 
order  to  follow  my  heart,  and  Kmilia  will  seek  you  every- 
where, even  to  the  utmost  boundaries  of  the  world.  I  do  not 
love,  nor  shall  I  ever  be  able  to  love,  any  thing  or  person  so 
much  as  your  family;  for  it  I  would  abandon  everything, 
and  should  lose  nothing,  since  in  it  are  included  all  that  can 
exist  of  beautiful,  virtuous,  amiable,  scmibilc,  and  learned  in 
the  world. 

Shelley  was  attracted  to  Emilia,  not  only  by 
her  sorrows  and  her  beauty,  but  still  more  by 
her  charms  of  intellect  and  the  ideal  tendencies 
of    her   mind.     "  She  had  cultivated   her  mind/' 

*  See  the  exquisite  madrigal  beginning:  "Madonna, 
V'herefore  hast  thou  sent  to  me,  sweet  basil  and  mig- 
nonette 'i  " 


302     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET 

he  says,  "  more  than  any  Italian  woman  I  have 
met.'^  She  read  the  Itahan  poets,  was  herself  a 
writer  of  verse,  and,  although  ignorant  of  Plato, 
had  written  an  "Apostrophe  to  Love"  that  has 
come  down  to  us,  and  bears  witness  to  her 
elevation  and  purity  of  thought  on  that  subject. 
This  possibly  may  have  given  Shelley  the  first 
idea  of  his  "  Epipsychidion  ;  "  and  from  Emilia 
he  borrowed  the  words  of  his  epigraph,  which 
is  the  key  to  the  poem  :  "  L'  anima  amante  si 
slancia  fuori  del  creato,  e  si  créa  nell'  infinite 
un  mondo  tutto  per  essa,  diverso  assai  da  questo 
oscuro  e  pauroso  baratro'"  (the  loving  soul  soars 
above  the  visible  world,  and  creates  for  herself 
in  infinite  space  a  world  all  her  own,  and  unlike 
indeed  to  this  dark  and  dreadful  prison). 

To  see  more  than  a  pure  Platonic  affection 
in  the  friendship  between  Shelley  and  Emilia, 
would  be  wilfully  to  shut  one's  eyes  against 
evidence.  Mary  is  too  closely  interwoven  in  the 
"  Epipsychidion,'^  as  sister  to  Emilia,  for  us  to 
suppose  for  an  instant  that  she  could  have  any 
cause  for  jealousy.  Shelley  himself  dismissed 
any  such  interpretation  of  his  conduct  with 
contempt.  On  October  22nd  he  wrote  to 
J.  Gisborne:  "The  'Epipsychidion'  is  a  mystery  ; 
as  to  real  flesh  and  blood,  you  know  that  I  do 
not  deal  in  those  articles  ;  you  might  as  well 
go  to  a  gin-shop  for  a  leg  of  mutton,  as  expect 
anything  human  or  earthly  from  me.  .  .  Some 
of  us  have,  in  a  prior  existence,  been  in  love 
with  an  Antigone,  and  that  makes  us  find  no 
full  content  in  any  mortal  tie.  ...  I  desired 
Oilier  not  to  circulate  this  piece  except  to  the 
initiated  (o-uverot),  and  even  they,  it  seems,  are 
inclined  to  approximate  me  to  the  circle  of  a 
servant-girl  and  her  sweetheart.  But  I  intend 
to  write  a  symposium  of  my  own  to  set  all  this 
right."     A  little  later,  in  1822,  when  his  passion 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  363 

for  Emilia  had  passed  away,  and  when,  too, 
that  part  of  himself  which  is  expressed  in  the 
*'  Epipsychidion  "  had  passed  away  also,  he  wrote 
to  Gisborne  : 

The  '•  Epipsychidion  "  I  cannot  look  at  ;  the  person 
whom  it  celebrates  was  a  cloud  instead  of  a  Juno  ;  and  poor 
Ixion  starts  from  the  Centaur  that  was  the  offspring  of  his 
own  embrace.  If  you  are  curious,  however,  to  hear  what  I 
am  and  have  been,  it  will  tell  you  something  thereof.  It  is 
an  idealised  history  of  my  life  and  feelings.  I  think  one  is 
always  in  love  with  something  or  other  ;  the  error — and  I 
confess  it  is  not  easy  for  spirits  cased  in  flesh  and  blood  to 
avoid  it — consists  of  seeking  in  a  mortal  image  the  likeness 
of  what  is  perhaps  eternal. 

There  can  be  no  mistake,  the  "Epipsychidion" 
is  to  its  author  merely  the  history  of  disappoint- 
ment in  his  search  for  ideal  beauty,  of  which  he 
has  caught  a  glimpse  in  the  created  beauty  that 
has  at  various  times  detained  him  in  his  flight 
towards  the  uncreated  and  the  eternal. 

In  Shelley,  love,  as  an  emotion  of  the  soul, 
cannot  be  satisfied  with  one  object  only  ;  every- 
thing beautiful  in  Art,  in  Nature,  in  humanity,  and 
especially  in  woman,  is  his  own  ;  he  loves  a  woman 
as  he  loves  the  sun,  the  cloud,  the  song  of  the 
lark  or  nightingale,  the  "  Niobe  ^'  or  the  "  Apollo," 
the  ''  Antigone  "  of  Sophocles,  or  the  "  Two 
Heavenly  Lovers  "  of  Calderon.  From  Harriet 
Grove  to  Emilia  Viviani,  that  which  he  sings  of 
with  rapture,  is  Love  itself;  his  only  Muse,  his 
one  God.  In  order  to  appreciate  the  "  Epipsy- 
chidion," it  must  be  read  in  the  same  spirit  as 
the  "Vita  Nuova"  of  Dante,  or  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets. 

The  romance  of  Emilia  ends  for  Shelley  as 
other  romances  had  ended.  We  have  seen  the 
estimation  in  which  he  held  her,  so  soon  as  the 
commonplace  realities  of  life  robbed  him  of  the 
gracious  phantom  of  his  own  fascinated  imagi- 
nation. 


364    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Mary  writes  to  Mrs.  Gisborne  on  March  7th, 

1822  : 

Emilia  has  married  Biondi  ;  we  hear  that  she  leads  him 
and  his  mother  (to  use  a  vulgarism)  a  devil  of  a  life.  The 
conclusion  of  our  friendship  {a  la  Italiana)  puts  me  in  mind 
of  a  nursery  rhyme  which  runs  thus  : 

As  I  was  going  down  Cranbourne  Lane, 

Cranbourne  Lane  was  dirty, 
And  there  I  met  a  pretty  maid 

Who  dropt  to  me  a  curtsey. 
I  gave  her  cakes,  I  gave  her  wine, 

I  gave  her  sugar-candy  ; 
But  oh  !  the  little  naughty  girl. 

She  asked  me  for  some  brandy. 

Now  turn  "  Cranbourne  Lane  "  into  Pisan  acquaintances, 
which  I  am  sure  are  dirty  enough,  and  "brandy"  into 
that  wherewithal  to  buy  brandy  (and  that  no  small  sum 
perî^,  and  you  have  the  whole  story  of  Shelley's  Italian 
Platonics. 

Emilia  Viviani  came  to  a  sad  and  gloomy 
end.  Medwin  thus  describes  her  last  days  ;  he 
had  come  across  Pacchiani  several  years  after- 
wards in  Florence,  who  one  day  said  to  him 
mysteriously  : 

"  I  will  introduce  you  to  an  old  friend — come  with  me," 
and  he  conducted  me  to  a  country  house  in  the  suburbs. 
The  villa  was  in  great  disrepair.  The  court  leading  to  it, 
ove  grown  with  weeds,  proved  that  it  had  been  for  some 
years  untenanted.  An  old  woman  led  us  through  a  number 
of  long  passages  and  rooms,  many  of  the  windows  in  which 
were  broken,  and  let  in  the  cold  blasts  from  "  the  wind- 
swept Apennines  ;  "  and  opening  at  length  a  door,  ushered 
us  into  a  chamber,  where  a  small  bed  and  a  couple  of  chairs 
formed  the  entire  furniture.  The  couch  was  covered  with 
white  gauze  curtains  to  exclude  the  gnats  ;  behind  them 
was  lying  a  female  form.  She  immediately  recognised  me 
— was  probably  prepared  for  my  visit — and  extended  her 
thin  hand  to  me  in  greeting.  So  changed  that  recumbent 
rigure,  that  I  could  scarcely  recognise  a  trace  of  the  once 
beautiful  Emilia.  Shelley's  evil  augury  had  been  fulfilled, 
she  had  found  in  her  marriage  ail  that  he  had  predicted  ; 
for  six  years  she  led  a  hfe  of  purgator)',  an  i  had  at  length 
broken  the  chain  with  the  consent  of  her  father,  who  had 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  365 

lent  her  this  long  disused  and  dilapidated  campagne.  I 
might  fill  many  a  page  by  speaking  of  the  tears  she  shed 
over  the  memory  of  Shelley — but  enough — she  did  not  long 
enjoy  her  freedom.  Shortly  after  this  interview  she  was 
confined  to  her  bed  ;  the  seeds  of  malaria.,  which  had  been 
sown  in  the  Maremma,  combined  with  that  all-irremediable 
malady,  broken-heartedness,  brought  on  a  rapid  consumption. 
The  old  woman,  who  had  been  her  nurse,  made  me  a 
long  narration  of  her  last  moments,  as  she  wept  bitterly. 
I  wept  too  when  I  thought  of  Shelley's  Psyche,  and  his 
"Epipsychidion." 

Happily  for  Shelley,  amid  all  such  disappoint- 
ments in  Platonic  love,  "  his  mistress  Urania,"  as 
he  named  poetical  inspiration,  remained  true  ta 
him. 

A  pamphlet  by  his  friend  Peacock  gave  him  an 
opportunity  of  breaking  a  lance  in  her  honour 
early  in  1821. 

Peacock's  article,  which  appeared  in  Ollier's 
Literary  Miscellany,  1820,  was  a  clever  attack  on 
poetry  and  poets.  He  gave  a  rapid  sketch  of 
**  The  Four  Ages  of  Poetry,"  the  age  of  iron,  the 
age  of  gold,  the  age  of  silver,  and  the  age  of  brass, 
which  recur  in  regular  succession  from  the  times  of 
Homer  to  those  of  Nonnus,  and  from  the  times  of 
the  Troubadours  to  those  of  Wordsworth.  He 
maintained  that  the  poetry  of  primitive  ages 
(periods  during  which  there  are — if  we  except  the 
priesthood,  which  always  flourishes — only  three 
flourishing  trades  :  those  of  the  king,  the  thief,  and 
the  beggar)  was  but  the  hyperbolical  panegyric  of 
the  exploits  and  wealth  of  a  restricted  number  of 
predominant  individuals.  The  strongest  part  of 
the  pamphlet  was  its  satire  on  the  modern  age 
of  brass — that  is,  on  the  contemporary  poets,  or 
the  Lake  School,  or  "  Returners  to  Nature,"  as  he 
amusingly  dubs  them. 

The  conclusion  drawn  by  Peacock  was  that 
poetry  is  suitable  to  the  childhood  of  nations,  but 
is  not  fit  for  their  maturity,  and  that  to  treat  it 


366    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET 

seriously  is  as  absurd  as  for  a  grown  man  to  rub 
his  gums  with  a  coral,  or  to  be  hushed  to  sleep 
with  the  tinkle  of  silver  bells.  He  made  no  ex- 
ception even  for  moral  poetry,  which  consists,  he 
says,  in  tearful  and  egoistical  rhapsodies,  expressive 
of  the  writer's  extreme  dislike  of  the  world  and  all 
it  contains. 

Such  a  satire  moved  Shelley  to  both  indig- 
nation and  amusement.  While  sharing  to  a 
certain  extent  Peacock's  criticisms  on  the  Bavii 
and  Msevii  of  the  day,  he  could  not  admit  that 
poetry  herself  was  responsible  for  the  rhymes  of 
Barry  Cornwall,  "this  stuff  in  terza,  ottava,  and 
trcmillesima  rima,"  whose  earthly  baseness  had 
drawn  down  the  lightning  of  his  friend's  undis- 
criminating  censure  "  upon  the  temple  of  immortal 
song"  itself 

"  Your  anathemas  against  poetry  itself,"  writes  Shelley 
(February  15th,  1821),  "excited  me  to  a  sacred  rage,  or 
caloëthes*  scribendi  of  vindicating  the  insulted  Muses.  I  had 
the  greatest  possible  desire  to  break  a  lance  with  you  within 
the  lists  of  a  magazine,  in  honour  of  my  mistress,  Urania  ; 
but  God  willed  that  I  should  be  too  lazy,  and  wrested  the 
victory  from  your  hope  ;  since  first  having  unhorsed  poetry, 
and  the  universal  sense  of  the  wisest  in  all  ages,  an  easy 
conquest  would  have  remained  to  you  in  me,  the  knight 
of  the  shield  of  shadow  and  the  lance  of  gossamere. 
Besides,  I  was  at  that  moment  reading  Plato's  '  Ion,'  which 
I  recommend  you  to  reconsider." 

An  attack  of  ophthalmia  prevented  Shelleyfrom 
immediately  setting  to  work  ;  but  by  the  month  of 
March,  1821,  he  had  completed  the  first  part  of  his 
admirable  "  Defence  of  Poetry,"  which  may  justly 
be  described  as  "  the  song  of  the  swan." 

Another  lady  besides  Emilia  soon  appeared  at 
Pisa  to  exercise  a  powerful  charm  over  the  poet. 

In  the  beginning  of  1821,  Shelley  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Edward  Williams  and   his  wife. 

*  Caloëthes,  the  contrary  oi  cacoethes,  Dowden  explains. 


SHELLEY  LN  LTALY.  367 

The  young  couple  had  come  direct  from  Geneva  to 
Italy  for  the  express  purpose  of  knowing  Shelley 
personally  ;  Medwin  having  described  him  as  a 
most  marvellous  phenomenon.  Edward  Williams 
was  the  descendant  of  one  of  Cromwell's  daughters, 
and  had  been  a  schoolfellow  of  Shelley  at  Eton  ; 
he  had  served  in  the  navy,  and  had  subsequently 
travelled  in  India  with  Medwin.  He  was  frank, 
loyal,  generous,  brave,  passionately  fond  of  the 
sea  and  of  navigation,  something  of  a  poet, 
possessed  real  dramatic  talent,*  and  was  therefore 
well  adapted  to  win  Shelley's  affection.  Mrs. 
Williams  realised  the  feminine  ideal  he  had 
essayed  to  describe  in  the  "Sensitive  Plant.'' 
Her  sweet  and  simple  nature,  the  elegance  of  her 
movements,  and  her  gracious  manners  compen- 
sated in  Shelley's  eyes  for  any  want  of  literary 
culture,  while  her  proficiency  in  music,  her  harp 
and  guitar  playing  were  a  new  and  hitherto 
unknown  delight  to  Shelley.  He  had  hardly 
known  her  an  hour  when  he  loved  her.  In  several 
exquisite  little  poemsf  he  has  expressed  his  tender 
affection  for  this  lady  ;  he  compares  her  to 
Miranda,  and  elects  himself  to  be  her  Ariel. 
Thenceforth  Shelley  and  Williams  were  never 
parted,  not  even  in  death. 

Among  the  most  frequent  guests  at  the  Casa 
AuUa,  was  a  personage  who  interested  Shelley  in 
more  ways  than  one,  but  more  especially  because 
he  represented  the  sacred  cause  of  freedom  for  the 
poet's  true  mother-country,  Greece.  He  writes  to 
Peacock,  on  the  21st  March,  1821  : 

We  have  made  a  very  interesting  acquaintance  with  a 

*  Shelley  wrote  an  epithalamium,  to  be  set  to  music,  for 
one  of  his  plays  on  a  subject  from  Boccaccio. 

t  See  "  Lines  to  Edward  Williams,"  "  The  Magnetic 
Lady  to  her  Patient,"  ''To  Jane — The  Invitation,"  ''To 
Jane — The  Recollection,"  "  With  a  Guitar,  to  Jane,"  "  To 
Jane." 


368    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Greek  Prince,  perfectly  acquainted  with  ancient  literature, 
and  full  of  enthusiasm  for  the  liberties  and  improvement  of 
his  country.  Maiy  has  been  a  Greek  student  for  several 
months,  and  is  reading  "Antigone"  with  our  turbanedi 
friend,  who,  in  return,  is  taught  English. 

This  turbaned  friend  was  Prince  MavrocordatOy 
one  of  the  survivors  of  the  Wallachian  insurrection, 
who  had  taken  refuge  in  Italy.  It  was  a  piece 
of  good  fortune  for  the  exiled  Greek,  and  for 
the  cause  of  Hellenic  independence,  to  meet  the 
poet  who  was  about  to  take  the  interests  of 
awakening  Greece  so  warmly  to  heart,  and  ta 
sing  with  heroic  enthusiasm  and  prophetic  in- 
spiration, the  defeat  of  the  Crescent  and  the 
triumph  of  Hellas. 

Shelley  knew  little  of  the  modern  Greeks, 
except  from  the  historical  novel  of  "Anastasius  ;"* 
he  saw  in  them  only  the  heirs  of  the  Hellenic 
name  and  glory,  "  the  descendants  of  the  nation 
to  which  we  owe  our  civilisation."  He  believed 
that,  though  degraded  by  misfortune  and  slavery, 
their  natural  characteristics  were  a  pledge  of  the 
future,  and  doubted  not  that  a  change  in  the 
political  situation  would  bring  about  their  com- 
plete regeneration. 

All  public  attention  is  now  centred  on  the  wonderful 
revolution  in  Greece.  I  dare  not,  after  the  events  of  last 
winter,  hope  that  slaves  can  become  freemen  so  cheaply  ; 
yet  I  know  one  Greek  of  the  highest  qualities,  both  of 
courage  and  conduct — the  Prince  Mavrocordato — and  if  the 
rest  be  like  him,  all  will  go  well. 

Some  months  later  he  was  at  Leghorn  with 
his  friend  Trelawney,  who  took  him  over  the 
docks,  where  men  of  all  the  nations  of  the  world 
were  congregated  together,  and  showed  him  the 

*  "Anastasius  ;  or,  Memoirs  of  a  Greek,"  written  at  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Three  vols.,  1S19  ;  by  Thomas 
Hope. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITAL^Y.  369 

modern    Greeks    he    had    just    glorified    in    his 
"  Hellas." 

"I  hear  their  shrill  nasal  voices,"  said  Trelawney,  as  they 
approached  the  Greek  vessel  they  were  about  to  visit,  "and 
should  like  to  know  if  you  can  trace  in  the  language  or 
lineaments  of  these  Greeks  of  the  nineteenth  century  A.D., 
the  faintest  resemblance  to  the  lofty  and  sublime  spirits  who 
lived  in  the  fourth  century  B.c.  An  English  merchant 
who  has  dealings  with  them,  told  me  he  thought  these 
modern  Greeks  were,  if  judged  by  their  actions,  a  cross 
between  the  Jews  and  the  Gipsies." 

Shelley  and  Trelawney,  while  thus  conversing 
had  ascended  the  San-Spiridioiie,  where  they 
found  the  Greeks  huddled  in  little  groups  on 
the  bridge,  shouting,  gesticulating,  smoking,  eating 
and  playing,  like  savages.  "Does  this  realise 
your  idea  of  Hellenism  }  "  asked  Trelawney.  "  No, 
but  it  does  of  Hell,"  answered  Shelley.  Still 
worse  was  it  when  he  heard  Captain  Zarita  speak  ; 
the  latter  offered  them  pipes  and  coffee  in  his 
cabin — under  a  niche  with  an  image  of  St.  Spiri- 
dion,  before  which  a  lamp  burned — and  told  them 
he  disapproved  of  war  because  it  interrupted 
trade.  "  Come  away,"  said  Shelley  ;  "  there  is  not 
a  drop  of  the  old  Hellenic  blood  here.  These 
are  not  the  men  to  rekindle  the  ancient  Greek 
fire  ;  their  souls  are  extinguished  by  traffic  and 
superstition.     Come  away  !  " 

It  was  not  possible  to  Shelley  to  move  among 
the  realities  of  life  without  the  infliction  of  con- 
stant pain  çn  his  own  ideal;  and  he  withdrew 
from  the  world  principally  with  the  object  of 
avoiding  a  contact  involving  disenchantment.  It 
may  be  that  we  should  never  have  possessed 
"  Hellas,"  had  Shelley  spoken  with  Captain  Zarita 
a  ïew  montlis  earlier. 

The  companionship  of  Prince  Mavrocordato 
awoke  in  him  all  his  Greek  sympathies.  The 
Prince  communicated  to   him   in  April  the  pro- 

2    B 


370    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET, 

clamation  just  issued  by  his  cousin  Ypsilanti  ; 
on  that  day  Shelley  conceived  "  Hellas/'  and 
ordered  two  seals  to  be  engraved  with  the 
device  of  a  dove  with  outspread  wings  surrounded 
by  this  motto  :  "Mâi/rts  et/i  epffkâv  àyûvcùv."  The  same 
motto  became  the  epigraph  of  the  drama. 

It  was  fitting  that  Shelley's  last  complete 
work  should  be  a  hymn  in  honour  of  liberty 
and  of  the  glorious  country  of  Homer,  Mschylus, 
and  Plato.  But  his  enthusiasm  for  the  past  did  not 
prevent  him  from  taking  a  clear  view  of  European 
politics,  and  of  the  action  of  the  great  Powers 
in  a  conflict  involving  the  destinies  of  the  world. 
He  severely  blamed  the  interested  and  selfish 
policy  of  England  ;  and  indicated  the  only  proper 
course  to  be  taken  by  a  nation  regardful  of  the 
rights  of  peoples  and  of  her  own  dignity  : 
this  should  be  to  support  the  independence  of 
Greece,  instead  of  incurring  the  indelible  stain 
of  a  monstrous  alliance  "with  the  enemies  of 
domestic  happiness,  of  Christianity,  and  of  civili- 
sation." 

One  cannot  read  "  Hellas  "  without  being 
struck  w^ith  its  likeness  to  the  "  Persae ''  of 
^Eschylus.  The  dramatic  interest  is  equally 
simple,  grand,  and  terrible  in  both.  The  coming 
of  successive  messengers  of  evil,  the  evocation 
of  Mahomet  H.  by  Ahasuerus,  the  despair  of 
Mahmud,  the  admirable  contrast  between  the 
choruses  of  Greek  and  Turkish  slaves — these 
almost  transport  us  to  the  stage  of  Athens. 
But  there  is  a  moral  and  philosophical  atmo- 
sphere in  Shelley's  drama  which  we  do  not  find 
in  -^schylus,  lifting  it  far  above  the  actual  facts 
on  which  it  is  grounded  ;  there  is  an  inspired 
presentiment  of  the  final  triumph  of  the  Hellenic 
or  Promethean  spirit  over  all  religious  fanaticism 
and  social  tyranny.  By  a  marvellous  stroke  of 
genius   he   makes  Mahmud    himself  the   mouth- 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  371 

piece  of  this  prophecy  ;  and  in  Mahmud  is  in- 
carnate not  only  the  melancholy  belonging  to  the 
decline  of  a  great  but  decaying  power,  but  the 
deeper  and  more  human  melancholy  of  a  mind 
awakened  by  adversity  to  great  thoughts  on  the 
fragility  of  human  things,  and  to  the  revelations 
of  the  ever-present,  ever-subsisting  spirit  per- 
sonified in  Ahasuerus. 

There  is  a  strange  grandeur  in  this  mixture  of 
the  real  and  the  ideal,  of  history  and  vision,  which 
lifts  us  far  above  the  narrow  scene  of  action, 
to  the  remotest  spheres  of  thought  and  imagi- 
nation. All  through  "  Hellas  "  we  feel  ourselves 
in  presence  of  a  still  higher  and  vaster  con- 
ception, which  the  poet  had  at  first  intended 
to  realise,  but  which  he  relinquished  in  order  to 
strike  the  popular  imagination  quickly  and  for- 
cibly. Though  "Hellas"  did  not  obtain  its 
rightful  meed  of  fame  in  London,  the  poet,  had 
he  lived,  would  have  been  consoled  for  the  in- 
justice of  his  fellow-countrymen,  by  its  efi"ect 
on  Lord  Byron.  ''It  is  impossible  to  express," 
says  Medwin,  "the  influence  exercised  on  Byron 
by  that  drama,  and  by  Shelley's  enthusiasm, 
when  he  resolved  to  devote  himself  to  the  cause 
of  Greece."  Shelley  needed  keen  intellectual 
excitement  to  counteract  the  moral  and  physical 
exhaustion  induced  at  intervals  by  ill-health  and 
financial  difficulties.  But  the  return  of  fine 
weather,  and  the  delight  of  boating,  contributed 
to  his  rapid  restoration.  He  had  now  a  boat 
of  his  own,. a  boat  that  held  three  persons,  "a 
little  nautilus-shell,"  he  called  it,  with  which  he 
navigated  the  rushing  Arno,  or  the  Serchio,  to 
the  great  alarm  of  Italian  onlookers. 

This  period  of  tranquillity  was  only  broken  by 
an  excursion  to  Florence,  and  a  short  visit  to  Lord 
Byron,  at  Ravenna,  in  August. 

Shelley  found  him  transformed  by  his  passion 

2  B  2 


372    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

for  the  Countess  GuiccioH,  which  had  rescued  him 
from  the  wretched  excesses  into  which  he  had 
fallen  through  pride  and  indifference  rather  than 
from  choice,  in  excellent  healthy  and  immersed  in 
politics  and  literature. 

Shelley  had  barely  arrived  when  Byron 
hastened  to  communicate  to  him  a  monstrous 
and  shameful  story  that  had  been  told  him  by  the 
Hoppners,  and  which  out  of  hatred  to  Claire,  his 
former  mistress,  he  was  not  unwilling  to  believe. 
Claire  was  said  to  have  been  Shelley's  mistress 
while  at  Naples,  and  to  have  borne  him  a  child 
which  he  had  sent  to  the  Foundling  Hospital. 
The  authors  of  the  calumny  were  Shelley's  former 
servants.  Elise  and  Paolo,  who  thus  revenged 
themselves  for  their  dismissal.  Shelley  was 
greatly  hurt  to  think  that  his  highly  valued  friends 
the  Hoppners  could  for  a  moment  have  believed 
so  shameful  a  story.  He  begged  his  wife  to  write 
to  the  Hoppners,  refuting  the  charge  which  she 
"  only  can  effectually  rebut."  Mary  at  once 
wrote  as  Shelley  asked  her,  a  letter  full  of  the 
most  eloquent  indignation,  as  well  as  the  deepest 
affection  for  her  husband  : 

That  my  beloved  Shelley  should  stand  thus  slandered  in 
your  minds — he,  the  gentlest  and  most  humane  of  creatures 
— is  more  painful  to  me,  oh,  far  more  painful  than  words  can 
express!  Need  I  say  that  the  union  between  my  husband 
and  myself  has  ever  been  undisturbed  ?  Love  caused  our 
first  imprudence  ;  love  which,  improved  by  esteem,  a  perfect 
trust  one  in  the  other,  a  confidence  and  affection  which, 
visited  as  we  have  been  by  severe  calamities  (have  we  not 
lost  two  children  ?),  has  increased  daily  and  knows  no 
bounds. 

Shelley  handed  this  letter  to  Lord  Byron,  who 
undertook  to  forward  it  to  the  Hoppners  with 
comments  of  his  own  ;  but  he  failed  to  do  so,  and 
the  letter  was  found  among  Byron's  papers  after 
his  death. 

Very  different  was  Shelley's  zeal  for  and  in  all 


1 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  373 

that  concerned  his  friend.  La  Guiccioli  was 
desirous  of  removing  to  Switzerland  in  order  to 
extricate  herself  from  the  difficulties  of  her 
position  in  Italy,  and  Shelley,  at  Byron's  request, 
tasked  himself  to  write  her  a  long  letter  in  Italian 
advising  her  to  stay  where  she  was;  "an  odd  thing 
enough  for  an  utter  stranger  to  write  on  subjects 
of  the  utmost  delicacy  to  his  friend's  mistress,"  he 
writes  to  Mary.  "  But  it  seems  destined  that  I  am 
always  to  have  some  active  part  in  everybody's 
affairs  whom  I  approach.  I  have  set  down  in 
lame  Italian,  the  strongest  reasons  I  can  think  of 
against  the  Swiss  emigration.  To  tell  you  the 
truth,  I  should  be  very  glad  to  accept  as  my  fee, 
his  establishment  in  Tuscany." 

Shelley's  "  lame  Italian  ''  was  eloquent  enough 
to  detain  the  Countess  in  Italy,  and  as  a  reward 
for  her  docility  she  asks  of  him  a  favour  :  "  Do 
not  leave  Ravenna  without  Milord."  It  was 
arranged  that  Byron  should  join  Shelley  at  Pisa. 

During  Shelley's  stay  at  Ravenna  he  visited  the 
curious  antiquities  of  that  ancient  city,  and  "looked 
with  a  certain  interest  at  the  tomb  of  Theodoric 
and  the  Mausoleum  of  Galla  Placidia  ;  "  but  cared 
little  for  the  beauty  of  its  mosaics  and  symbolic 
sculptures.  He  wandered  through  the  gloomy 
pine-forest  that  separates  Ravenna  from  the  sea, 
wherein  Dante  meditated,  and  Byron,  at  the 
request  of  La  Guiccioli, cotnposed  his  "Prophecy  of 
Dante."  Nor  did  he  neglect  the  tomb  of  the  great 
Ghibeline.  "  I  have  seen  Dante's  tomb,"  he 
writes  to  Mary,  "  and  worshipped  the  sacred  spot." 

But  more  than  aught  else  at  Ravenna,  Lord 
Byron  himself  and  the  progress  of  his  genius  was 
interesting  to  Shelley. 

He  has  read  to  me  one  of  the  unpublished  cantos  of  "  Don 
Juan,''  which  is  astonishingly  fine.  It  sets  him  not  only  above, 
but  far  above,  all  the  poets  of  the  day — every  word  has  the 
stamp  of  immortality.    I  despair  of  rivalling  Lord  Byron — as 


374    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

well  I  may — and  there  is  no  other  with  whom  it  is  worth 
contending.  This  canto  (5th)  is  totally  in  the  style,  and 
sustained  with  incredible  ease  and  power,  of  the  end  of  the 
second  canto.  There  is  not  a  word  which  the  most  rigid 
asserter  of  the  dignity  of  human  nature  could  desire  to  be 
cancelled.  It  fulfils,  in  a  certain  degree,  what  I  have  long 
preached  of  producing — something  wholly  new  and  relative 
to  the  age,  and  yet  surpassingly  beautiful.  It  may  be  vanity, 
but  I  think  I  see  the  trace  of  my  earnest  exhortations  to  him 
to  create  something  wholly  new. 

The  unreserved  admiration  felt  by  Shelley  for 
Byron,  discouraged  him,  perhaps,  more  than  any 
other  cause  from  writing.  He  was  bitten  by  the 
desire  for  fame. 

"  I  write  nothing,"  he  tells  Peacock,  "  and  probably  shall 
write  no  more.  It  offends  me  to  see  my  name  classed  among 
those  who  have  no  name.  ...  I  had  rather  be  nothing.  .  .  . 
And  the  accursed  cause  to  the  downfall  of  which  I  dedicated 
what  powers  1  may  have  had — flourishes  like  a  cedar,  and 
covers  England  with  its  boughs.  My  motive  was  never  the 
infirm  desire  of  fame  ;  and  if  I  should  continue  an  author, 
I  feel  that  I  should  desire  it.  The  cup  is  justly  given  to  one 
only  of  an  age  ;  indeed,  participation  would  make  it  worth- 
less ;  and  unfortunate  they  who  seek  it  and  find  it  not." 

Yet  although  Shelley  thus  allowed  himself  to 
be  dazzled  by  the  splendour  of  Byron's  genius,  he 
felt  that  there  lay  between  them  an  abyss  that  the 
most  sincere  admiration  could  not  bridge.  Byron's 
selfishness  and  pride  closed  all  the  avenues  of  his 
"heart.     And  with  deep  melancholy  Shelley  says  : 

Lord  Byron  and  I  are  excellent  friends,  and  were  I 
reduced  to  poverty,  or  were  I  a  writer  who  had  no  claims  to 
a  higher  station  than  1  possess — or  did  I  possess  a  higher 
than  I  deserve — we  should  appear  in  all  things  as  such,  and 
I  would  freely  ask  him  any  favour.  Such  is  not  now  the 
case.  The  demon  of  mistrust  and  pride  lurks  between  two 
persons  in  our  situation,  poisoning  the  freedom  of  our  inter- 
course. This  is  a  tax,  and  a  heavy  one,  which  we  mu3t  pay 
for  being  human.  I  think  the  fault  is  not  on  my  side,  nor  is 
it  likely,  I  being  the  weaker.  I  hope  that  in  the  next  world 
these  things  will  be  better  managed.  What  is  passing  in 
the  heart  of  another  rarely  escapes  the  observation  of  one 
who  is  a  strict  anatomist  of  his  own. 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  375 

So  just  an  appreciation  of  Byron's  character, 
■and  of  the  moral  obstacles  to  perfect  friendship 
with  him,  was  due  in  great  measure  to  the  reserve 
which  Shelley  had  found  to  be  necessary  with 
regard  to  his  friend  Leigh  Hunt,  for  whose 
benefit  he  had  endeavoured,  while  staying  at 
Ravenna,  to  promote  with  Byron's  help  a 
periodical  to  be  called  The  Liberal.  With  Hunt 
he  could  speak  openly,  and  in  his  disappointment 
at  not  finding  Byron  so  generous  and  unselfish 
as  himself  he  wrote  to  him  as  follows  : 

Particular  circumstances,  or  rather,  I  should  say, 
particular  dispositions  in  Lord  Byron's  character,  render 
the  close  and  exclusive  intimacy  with  him  in  which  I  find 
myself  intolerable  to  me.  Thus  much,  my  best  friend,  I 
will  confess  and  confide  to  you.  No  feelings  of  my  own 
shall  injure  or  interfere  with  what  is  now  nearest  to  them — 
your  interest  ;  and  I  will  take  care  to  preserve  the  little 
influence  I  may  have  over  this  Proteus  in  whom  such 
strange  extremes  are  reconciled. 

On  October  25th,  Shelley  left  the  Baths  of 
San  Giuliano,  in  order  to  join  the  Williamses  at 
Pisa,  where  he  expected  Byron.  Immediately  on 
arriving,  he  hired  a  spacious  palazzo,  and  had  it 
put  in  readiness  for  the  noble  poet.  The  build- 
ing, it  was  said,  was  partly  constructed  after 
designs  by  Michael  Angelo,  and  was  called  the 
Palazzo  Lanfranchi-;  on  its  front,  above  a  chain 
such  as  was  worn  by  captives,  were  the  words 
"Alia  Giornata."  La  Guiccioli  had  arrived  at 
Pisa  before  Byron,  and  was  accompanied  by 
her  father  and  brother;  "the  lion's  jackals,"  as 
Shelley  called  them.  Shelley's  own  residence  was 
on  the  Lung'  Arno  ;  he  had  taken  a  few  rooms  on 
the  upper  floor  of  the  Tre  Palazzi  di  Chiesa,  from 
which  there  was  a  view  of  the  country  and  the 
sea.* 

*  So  says  Dowden,  but  Rabbe  says  a  view  "  of  the  town 
and  Its  envn-ons."  Dowden  says  expressly,  '■'■  avoidiiw  the 
ill  odours  of  the  town,"  etc. 


376    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

There,  among  his  books,  and  the  clustering 
plants*  he  loved  to  cultivate,  and  which  "for  him 
changed  sunny  winter  into  spring,"  he  resumed 
his  tragedy  of  "  Charles  L,"  which  he  purposed  to 
make  a  still  more  artistic  achievement  than  "  The 
Cenci."  Unfortunately,  it  was  never  completed. 
Some  considerable  fragments,  however,  remain — 
entire  scenes,  truly  Shakespearian  in  spirit.  If 
we  may  trust  Medwin,  Shelley  threw  aside  his 
work  from  a  feeling  of  disgust,  similar  to  that 
which  prevented  Michael  Angelo  from  completing 
the  bust  of  Brutus  in  the  Florence  Gallery,  "  dis- 
gust at  treason."  He  could  not  forgive  the 
murderers  of  Charles  I.,  and  shrank  from  painting 
the  hypocritical  tyrant  Cromwell  as  a  hero. 

In  Byron's  company,  Shelley  forgot  his 
grievances  and  his  reserve,  and  abandoned  himself 
to  the  fascination  of  a  poet  whose  very  faults 
were  attractive,  and  whose  brilliant  and  paradoxical 
conversation  amused  him,  and  brought  his  own 
qualities  into  play. 

The  two  friends  rarely  passed  a  day  without 
meeting,  or  practising  pistol  shooting. 

A  very  interesting  volume  might  be  made  of 
Shelley's  and  Byron's  conversations  as  recounted 
by  Medwin  and  Trelawney.  The  opposite 
characters  of  the  two  poets  are  shown  in  striking 
contrast:  the  one,  skipping  from  subject  to  sub- 
ject, touching  the  surface  only,  with  light  banter 
and  love  of  mystification  (Shelley  compared  him 
in  this  to  Voltaire)  ;  the  other,  serious  and  earnest,, 
oracular  in  speech,  and  following  with  contagious 
warmth  and  the  most  persuasive  sincerity  the 
sublime  leadings  of  his  imagination,  or  the  subtlest 
turns  of  the  argument  ;  yet  able  to  pass,  like 
Raffaelle,  when  occasion  served,  "  from  grave  to 
gay,   from   lively  to   severe."      Byron   read   every 

*  See  his  poem  entitled  "Zucca." 


SHELLEY  IN  ITALY.  yjy 

day  to  Shelley  what  he  had  composed  during 
the  night  :  either  "  Cain/'  that  apocalyptic  vision 
and  new  revelation  to  humanity,  or  "  Heaven  and 
Earth,"  one  of  his  most  polished  productions 
(Shelley  loved  to  declaim  the  choruses  of  this 
Avork,  deeming  them  models  of  the  lyrical  style), 
or  "The  Deformed  Transformed,"  which  of  all 
Byron's  works  Shelley  liked  the  least.  It  is  said 
that  Byron,  enraged  at  his  criticisms,  threw  the 
manuscript  into  the  fire  ;  but  if  so,  the  poem 
rose  again  from  its  ashes. 

The  merits  of  poets,  ancient  and  modern,  were 
warmly  discussed  ;  Shelley  enthusiastically  de- 
fending his  favourite  poets  Dante  and  Shakespeare 
from  Byron's  narrow  and  contemptuous  criticism. 
The  dangerous  subjects  of  philosophy  and 
religious  metaphysics  were  often  touched  upon  ; 
Byron  took  pleasure  in  rousing  the  irritable  sus- 
ceptibility of  his  friend  "the  Snake,"  as  he  called 
him,  on  these  points,  laughing  in  his  sleeve  at 
the  straightforward  sincerity  of  his  convictions. 

One  day  in  December,  1821,  Shelley  was 
informed  that  a  man  at  Lucca  had  been  con- 
demned to  be  burnt  alive  for  the  crime  of 
sacrilege.  ''The  Spanish  woman,"  as  Byron  calls 
her,  "who  has  her  petticoats  thrown  over  Lucca, 
has  just  condemned  a  poor  devil  to  the  stake 
for  stealing  a  wafer-box  out  of  a  church.  Shelley 
and  I  were  up  in  arms  against  this  act  of  piety, 
and  are  disturbing  everybody  to  get  the  sentence 
changed."  In  the  first  burst  of  indignation, 
Shelley  proposed  that  Byron,  Med  win,  and  he 
should  rescue  the  offender  at  the  moment  of 
execution  and  place  him  in  safety  beyond  the 
Tuscan  frontier.  Byron,  less  ardent,  but  more 
practical,  suggested  the  more  prudent  proceeding 
of  representations.  Shelley  accordingly  wrote  on 
the  subject  to  Lord  Guilford,  the  English 
Minister   at   Florence,  and  prepared  a  memorial 


378    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

to  the  Grand  Duke.  But  Lord  Guilford's  inter- 
vention was  effectual,  and  on  December  13th 
Shelley  wrote  to  Lord  Byron  : 

"  I  hear  this  morning  that  the  design  .  .  . 
of  burning  my  fellow-serpent  has  been  aban- 
doned, and  that  he  has  been  condemned  to  the 
galleys.'^ 

Shelley  had  missed  a  grand  opportunity  of 
overturning  the  idols  of  the  false  gods,  of  ex- 
tinguishing the  flames,  and  of  exclaiming  with 
the  hero  of  "  The  Revolt  of  Islam  ''  ; 

"  I  am  Laon  1  '' 


CHAPTER   XX. 

SHELLEY  AT  PISA  AND  AT  CASA  MAGNI — HIS 
DEATH  AND  FUNERAL  PYRE — "THE  TRIUMPH 
OF   LIFE" — 1822. 

The  opening  of  the  year  1822  had  added  to 
the  little  English  colony  at  Pisa  a  new  member 
who  very  soon  became  one  of  Shelley^s  most 
devoted  friends  and  fervent  admirers.  This  was 
Edward  John  Trelawney.  He  was  of  a  chivalrous 
and  adventurous  nature  ;  noble  and  generous  ; 
ardent  in  his  admiration  of  Shelley's  intellect 
and  character  ;  and  holding  him  far  superior  to 
Byron,  he  became  a  constant  guest  at  Shelley's 
rooms  during  this  the  last  year  of  his  life,  and  the 
most  disinterested  and  faithful  of  his  biographers.* 

"A  kind  of  half-Arab  Englishman,"  says  Mrs.  Shelley, 
"whose  life  has  been  as  changeful  as  that  of  Anastasius, 
and  who  recounts  the  adventures  of  his  youth  as  eloquently 
and  well  as  the  imagined  Greek.  .  .  .  He  is  six  feet  high  ; 
raven-black  hair,  which  curls  thickly  and  shortly  like  a 
Moor's  ;  dark-gray  expressive  eyes  ;  overhanging  brows  ; 
upturned  lips,  and  a  smile  which  expresses  good-nature  and 
kind-heartedness  .  .  .  his  language,  as  he  relates  the  events 
of  his  life,  energetic  and  simple,  whether  the  tale  be  one  of 
blood  and  horror  or  of  irrésistible  comedy.  His  company  is 
delightful,  for  he  excites  me  to  think." 

*  "  Records  of  Shelley,  Byron,  and  the  Author."  London, 
1878. 


38o    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

Shelley  and  his  friends  thought  of  writing 
a  play,  or  at  the  least  a  novel,  founded  on  his  ad- 
venturous life.  In  the  "  Fragments  of  an  Un- 
finished Drama,"  we  have  Trelawney  idealised  in 
the  character  of  the  Pirate. 

Trelawney  gives  a  most  amusing  account  of  his 
first  interview  with  Shelley; 

It  was  late  when  I  arrived  at  Pisa,  and  after  dining  I 
hurried  to  the  Tre  Palazzi  on  the  Lung'  Arno,  where  the 
Shelleys  and  WiUiamses  lived  in  the  same  house.  The 
Williamses  received  me  in  their  earnest,  cordial  manner. 
We  had  a  great  deal  to  communicate  to  each  other,  and 
were  in  loud  and  animated  conversation,  when  I  was  rather 
put  out  by  observing  in  the  passage  near  the  open  door, 
opposite  to  where  I  sat,  a  pair  of  glittering  eyes  steadily 
fixed  on  mine;  it  was  too  dark  to  make  out  whom  they 
belonged  to.  With  the  acuteness  of  a  woman  Mrs. 
Williams's  eyes  followed  the  direction  of  mine,  and  going  to 
the  doorway  she  laughingly  said  :  "  Come  in,  Shelley  ;  it's 
only  our  friend  Tre  just  arrived."  Swiftly  gliding  in,  blush- 
ing like  a  girl,  a  tall  thin  stripling  held  out  both  his  hands  ; 
and  although  I  could  hardly  believe — as  I  looked  at  his 
flushed,  feminine,  and  artless  face — that  it  could  be  the  poet, 
I  returned  his  warm  pressure.  After  the  ordinary  greetings 
and  courtesies,  he  sat  down  and  listened.  I  was  silent  froin 
astonishment.  Was  it  possible  this  mild-looking,  beardless 
boy  could  be  the  veritable  monster  at  war  with  all  the 
world — excommunicated  by  the  Fathers  of  the  Church, 
deprived  of  his  civil  rights  by  the  fiat  of  a  grim  Lord 
Chancellor,  discarded  by  every  member  of  his  family,  and 
denounced  by  the  rival  sages  of  our  literature  as  the  founder 
of  a  Satanic  school  ?  I  couLd  not  believe  it  ;  it  must  be  a 
hoax. 

It  is  difficult  for  the  present  generation  even 
to  conceive  the  acrid  bigotry  of  fifty  years  ago» 

He  was  habited  like  a  boy,  in  a  black  jacket  and 
trousers  which  he  seemed  to  have  outgrown.  ,  .  .  Mrs. 
Williams  saw  my  embarrassment,  and  to  relieve  me  asked 
Shelley  what  book  he  had  in  his  hand  ?  "  Calderon's 
Magico  Prodi_s;ioso.  I  am  translating  some  passages  in  it." 
"  Oh  I  read  it  to  us  !"  Shoved  off  from  the  shore  of  common- 
place incidents  that  could  not  interest  him,  and  fairly 
launched  on  a  theme  that  did,  he  instantly  became  ob- 
livious  of   everything   but  the   book    in    his    hand.      The 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNL  381 

masterly  manner  in  which  he  analysed  the  genius  of  the 
author,  his  lucid  interpretation  of  the  story,  and  the  ease 
with  which  he  translated  into  our  language  the  most 
subtle  and  imaginative  passages  of  the  Spanish  poet,  were 
Tnarvellous,  as  was  his  command  of  the  two  languages. 
After  this  touch  of  his  quality,  I  no  longer  doubted  his 
identitv.  A  dead  silence  ensued.  Looking  up,  I  asked  : 
"  Where  is  he  ?"  Mrs.  Williams  said  :  "  Who  ?  Shelley  ? 
Oh  !  he  comes  and  goes  like  a  spirit,  no  one  knows  when  or 
-where." 

At  the  end  of  1821,  Shelley  and  Williams  had 
conceived  the  idea  of  building  a  boat  according  to 
a  model  the  latter  had  brought  with  him  from 
England.  Trelavvney  was  consulted,  and  proposed 
an  American  schooner  ;  but  Shelley  and  Williams 
persisted  in  their  plan,  and  the  construction  of  the 
boat  was  entrusted  to  Captain  Roberts,  a  friend  of 
Trelawney's  at  Genoa.  The  three  friends  had 
discussed  it  during  the  night  of  Jan.  15th,  1822. 
'*  Thus  on  that  night,"  wrote  Mrs.  Shelley  at  a 
later  period,  "  one  of  gaiety  and  thoughtlessness 
— Jane's  and  my  miserable  destiny  was  decided. 
We  then  said,  laughing  each  to  the  other  :  ^  Our 
husbands  decide  without  asking  our  consent,  or 
having  our  concurrence;  for  to  tell  you  the  truth,  I 
hate  this  boat,  though  I  say  nothing.'  Said  Jane: 
'So  do  I  ;  but  speaking  would  be  useless  and  only 
spoil  their  pleasure  !  '  How  well  I  remember  that 
night!  How  short-sighted  wc  are!  And  now 
that  its  anniversary  is  come  and  gone,  methinks  I 
cannot  be  the  wretch  I  too  truly  am." 

While  waiting  the  arrival  of  the  fatal  boat, 
Shelley  spent  his  leisure  hours  in  translating  from 
Calderon  and  Goethe;  *  he  considered  the  Magico 
Prodigioso    and    Faust    to    be    wonderfully   alike, 

*  He  found  Calderon  far  less  difficult  to  translate  than 
Goethe  ;  "only  Coleridge,"  he  said  modestly,  "  is  capable  of 
translating  Goethe."  t'aiist  has,  since  that  time,  been 
frequently  translated  into  French,  but  never  so  well  as  by 
M.  Camille  Benoit  in  a  book  just  published  by  Lemcrre. 


382     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

though  he  admitted  the  different  genius  of  the  two 
authors.  Goethe  seemed  to  him  the  greater 
philosopher  and  Calderon  the  greater  poet. 

Two  vexatious  incidents  occurred  in  March  to 
disturb  the  calm  current  of  their  life  at  Pisa. 

The  ground-floor  of  the  building  in  which  the 
Shellej's  dwelt  was  used  on  Sundays  as  an  Evan- 
gelical chapel,  and  Mary,  out  of  compliance  with 
public  opinion,  was  occasionally  present  at  the 
services  and  sermons.  Dr.  Nott,  the  learned  editor 
of  the  poems  of  Surrey  and  Wyatt,  was  the 
preacher.  On  Sunday,  March  3rd,  Mary  received  a 
special  invitation  requesting  her  presence,  and  that 
morning's  discourse  consisted  of  an  attack  on 
Atheism,  with  several  direct  allusions  to  Mrs. 
Shelley,  intended  to  warn  her  against  the  baleful 
influence  of  her  husband's  doctrines.  The  gossips 
and  scandal-mongers  were  delighted — but  Mary 
bitterly  regretted  having  visited  the  piano  di  sotto, 
and  longed  for  the  sea-girt  isle  of  which  Shelley, 
sick  of  the  wickedness  of  men,  had  spoken  to  her 
in  his  letters  from  Ravenna. 

On  another  Sunday,  March  24th,  Byron,  Shelley, 
Count  Pietro  Gamba,  Captain  Hay,  and  Taaffe,  the 
translator  of  Dante,  were  returning  from  their 
evening  ride,  when  a  half-drunken  dragoon  rode 
through  the  midst  of  the  group,  jostling  against  the 
commentator  of  the  "  Divina  Commedia."  Byron 
and  Shelley  set  off  in  pursuit  of  the  ruffian, 
stopped  him,  demanded  his  name  and  address,  and 
gave  him  their  cards.  Sergeant-Major  Masi  called 
to  the  guard,  and  began  slashing  right  and  left 
with  his  sword.  Shelley  was  knocked  ofi"  his 
horse,  and  would  have  been  struck,  but  for  the 
intervention  of  Captain  Hay.  Masi  fled,  and  was 
severely  wounded  by  one  of  Byron's  sbirri  ("  I 
have  some  rough  fellows  in  my  service,"  he  used  to 
say),  and  taken  to  the  hospital.  This  adventure 
made  a  great  sensation  at  Pisa,  and   occasioned 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNI.  383 

the  most  absurd  rumours.  At  a  later  period  it 
served  the  Government  as  one  pretext  among 
others  for  exiling  Count  Pietro  Gamba. 

These  untoward  incidents,  which  were  made 
more  annoying  through  their  exaggeration^  de- 
termined Shelley  on  removing  from  Pisa,  and 
seeking  a  retired  spot  far  from  the  tongue  of 
gossip  and  small  scandals  ;  he  was  further  impelled 
to  this  course  by  a  desire  to  break  off  his  superficial 
intimacy  with  Byron.  He  had  visited  the  shores 
of  the  Bay  of  Spezzia  a  {&\v  months  before,  and  had 
discovered  a  deserted  building,  Casa  Magni,  situated 
in  melancholy  solitude  between  the  villages  of 
Lerici  and  San  Terenzo.  It  was  a  house  of  dull 
and  severe  aspect,  built  on  cloister-like  arches, 
which  gave  it  the  appearance  of  a  convent,  sheltered 
behind  by  a  hill  covered  with  dark  forest  trees, 
and  overlooking  the  sea,  which  washed  the  very 
walls  of  the  terrace.  "  The  natives  were  even 
wilder  than  the  place.  Many  a  night  they  passed 
on  the  beach  singing  or  rather  howling  ;  the  women 
dancing  about  among  the  waves  that  broke  at 
their  feet." 

It  was  in  trembling,  and  with  a  kind  of  dumb 
terror  full  of  forebodings  of  evil,  that  Mary  took 
possession  of  the  lonely  and  comfortless  house, 
"  We  might  have  been  wrecked,"  she  says,  "  on 
one  of  the  South  Sea  Islands,  and  have  felt 
no  farther  from  all  civilisation  ;  yet  where  there 
is  sunshine,  comfort  becomes  luxury,  and  our  own 
society  suffices  us." 

Shelley's  delight  was  now  perfect  ;  he  had 
almost  found  his  solitary  isle,  and  writes  to  his 
friend  Smith:  "As  to  me,  like  Anacreon's  swallow, 
I  have  left  my  Nile,  and  have  taken  up  my 
summer  quarters  here,  in  a  lonely  house  close 
by  the  sea-side,  surrounded  by  the  soft  and  sublime 
scenery  of  the  Gulf  of  Spezzia." 

On  ]\Iay  12th,  the  fatal    boat   arrived.      The 


384    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AXD  THE  POET. 

inhabitants  of  Casa  Magni  were  walking  after 
dinner  on  the  terrace  when  they  descried  a  strange 
sail  rounding  the  point  of  Porto  Venere;  it  was 
the  Don  Jiian^  as  Byron  had  christened  her — a 
name  soon  changed  by  Shelley  for  that  of  the 
A  rid. 

The  enthusiastic  poet  insisted  on  trying  her 
the  very  next  day,  eagerly  seeking  opportunities 
of  matching  her  against  the  feluccas  and  other  big 
craft  in  the  bay.  Williams,  in  his  curious  journal 
full  of  Shelley-worship,  gives  a  detailed  account 
of  their  daily  adventurous  expeditions  to  every 
point  on  the  coast  of  Spezzia.  Their  feelings 
resembled  those  of  Christopher  Columbus  when 
discovering  the  New  World. 

Our  two  sailors  were  in  ecstasies  over  their 
boat  ;  Williams  as  jealous  of  the  Ariel's  reputation 
as  of  his  wife's  ;  they  could  not  tear  themselves 
away  from  their  plaything,  and  the  Mediterranean 
soon  seemed  ''too  small  and  calm  a  lake  on  which 
to  display  her  excellence.'^  They  dismissed  the 
Genoese  sailor  engaged  by  Trelawney,  retaining 
only  an  inexperienced  lad,  named  Charles  Vivian. 
Williams, who  knew  something  of  the  sea,  instructed 
Shelley  how  to  handle  a  boat,  "  with  as  much 
anxiety,''  says  the  latter,  "  as  a  sparrow's  over  her 
cuckoo  young." 

"  It  was  great  fun,"  writes  Trelawney,"to  witness  Williams 
teaching  the  poet  howto  steer,  and  other  points  of  seamanship. 
As  usual,  Shelley  had  a  book  in  his  hand,  saying  he  could 
read  and  steer  at  the  same  time,  as  one  was  mental,  the  other 
mechanical.  .  .  .  The  boat  on  one  occasion  getting,  as  sailors 
express  it,  '  in  irons,'  Shelley's  hat  was  knocked  overboard, 
and  he  would  probably  have  followed,  if  I  had  not  held  him. 
He  was  so  uncommonly  awkward,  that  when  they  had  things 
ship-shape,  Williams,  somewhat  scandalised  at  the  lubberly 
manœuvre,  blew  up  the  poet  for  his  neglect  and  inattention 
to  orders.  Shelley  was,  however,  so  happy,  and  in  such  high 
glee,  and  the  nautical  terms  so  tickled  his  fancy,  that  he 
€ven  put  his  beloved  '  Plato  '  in  his  pocket,  and  gave  his 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNI.  385 

mind  up  to  fun  and  frolic.  '  You  will  do  no  good  with 
Shelley,'  I  said,  'until  you  heave  his  books  and  papers  over- 
board ;  shear  the  wisps  of  hair  that  hang  over  his  eyes  ;  and 
plunge  his  arms  up  to  the  elbows  in  a  tar-bucket.'  Shelley 
was  often  quite  heedless  of  the  boat,  so  intent  was  he  on 
catching  images  from  the  ever-changing  sea  and  sky." 

As  the  Ariel  drew  too  much  water  to  near 
the  shore,  Williams,  with  the  help  of  a  carpenter, 
had  constructed  a  very  small  boat,  of  reeds  and 
tarred  canvas,  flat-bottomed,  and  so  light  as  to 
be  easily  carried  by  one  person  from  the  house 
to  the  shore.  This  fragile  toy  delighted  the  poet  ; 
the  slightest  movement  caused  her  to  capsize,  and 
more  than  once  Shelley  was  in  real  danger.  But 
he  attributed  this  to  the  boat's  unsteadiness, 
rather  than  to  any  imprudence  of  his  own.  "  I 
.see,"  he  said,  "why  ships  and  boats  are  of  the 
feminine  gender;  it  is  because  they  are  as  perfidious 
as  women."  On  this  subject,  Trelawney  relates 
two  anecdotes  too  characteristic  to  be  omitted  : 

On  a  calni  sultry  evening,  Jane  was  sitting  on  the  sands 
'before  the  villa,  on  the  margin  of  the  sea,  with  her  two 
infants,  and  watching  for  her  husband — he  was  becalmed  in 
the  offing,  awaiting  the  sea-breeze.  Shelley  came  from  the 
house,  dragging  the  skiff;  after  launching  her,  he  said  to 
Jane  :  "  The  sand  and  air  are  hot  ;  let  us  float  on  the  cool, 
calm  sea  ;  there  is  room,  with  careful  stowage,  for  us  all  in 
my  barge."  His  flashing  eyes  and  vehement,  eager  manner 
■determined  on  the  instant  execution  of  any  project  that  took 
his  fancy,  however  perilous.  ...  So  Jane  impulsively  and 
promptly  scjuatted  in  the  bottom  of  the  frail  bark  with  her 
babies.  She  understood  that  Shelley  intended  to  float  on 
the  water  near  the  shore,  where  the  sea  is  very  shallow.  A 
puff  of  wind,  a  ripple  on  the  water,  an  incautious  movement, 
and  the  tub  of  a  thing  must  cant  over.  The  poet  presently, 
proud  of  his  freight,  triumphantly  shoved  off  from  the 
shore,  and,  to  exhibit  his  skill  as  a  mariner,  rowed  round 
a  jutting  promontory  into  deep  blue  water.  There  was  no 
eye  watching  them,  no  boat  within  a  mile,  the  shore  fast 
receding,  the  water  deepening,  and  the  poet  dreaming.  As 
these  dismal  facts  flashed  on  Jane's  mind,  her  insane  folly 
in  trusting  herself  to  a  man  of  genius,  but  devoid  of 
judgment,  prudence,  or  skill,  dismayed  her.     After  pulling 

2   C 


386    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

out  a  long  way,  the  poet  rested  on  his  oars,  unconscious  of 
her  fears,  and  apparently  of  where  he  was,  absorbed  in  a 
deep  reverie.  .  .  .  Spellbound  with  terror,  Jane  kept  her 
eyes  on  the  awful  boatman,  lost  in  his  sombre  melan- 
choly. She  made  several  remarks,  but  they  met  with  no 
response. 

Suddenly  he  raised  his  head  ;  his  brow  cleared,  and  his 
face  brightened  as  with  a  bright  thought,  and  he  exclaimed 
joyfully  :  "  Now  let  us  together  solve  the  great  mystery." 
Jane,  understanding  the  danger  she  would  run  did  she  remaia 
silent,  or  too  brusquely  rouse  the  poet  from  his  ecstasy, 
answered  in  her  usual  cheerful  voice  :  "  No,  thank  you,  not 
now  ;  I  should  like  my  dinner  first,  and  so  would  the 
children."  And  seeing  the  poet  shocked  by  this  gross 
material  answer  to  his  sublime  proposition,  she  continued  : 
"And  look,  the  sea-breeze  is  coming  in,  and  the  mist  is 
clearing  away  ;  we  ought  to  go  back — they  will  be  anxious 
about  us,  and  Edward  says  this  boat  is  not  safe."  "  Safe  !" 
said  the  poet  ;  "  I'll  go  to  Leghorn  or  anywhere  in  her." 
"  You  haven't  yet  written  the  words  for  the  Indian  air,"^ 
Jane  went  on.  '•  Yes,  I  have,"  he  answered,  "  long  ago.  I 
must  write  them  out  again,  for  I  can't  read  what  I  compose 
and  write  out  of  doors.  You  must  play  the  air  again,  and 
I'll  try  and  make  the  thing. better." 

In  the  meanwhile  Shelley  kept  on  rowing,  and  regained 
the  shore  without  accident.  Once  again  the  demon  of  the 
deep,  who  watched  his  prey,  had  spread  his  wings  and  taken 
flight.  Williams  and  Trelawney,  both  very  anxious,  waited 
for  them  on  the  shore.  Jane  jumped  out  so  hurriedly  that 
the  punt  and  the  poet  capsized.  Williams  scolded  her  for 
this,  telling  her  that  if  she  had  waited  an  instant  he  would 
have  hauled  up  the  boat.  "  No,  thank  you,"  she  cried,  still 
in  excitement.  "  Oh,  you  do  not  know  what  a  dreadful  fate 
I  have  just  escaped.  Never  will  I  put  my  foot  in  that 
horrid  coffin  !  Solve  the  great  mystery  !  Why,  he  is  the 
greatest  of  all  mysteries  !  You  can  form  some  notion  of 
what  other  people  will  do,  as  they  partake  of  our  common 
nature — not  what  he  will  do  !  He  is  seeking  after  what  we 
all  avoid — death  !  "  At  dinner  she  ate  nothing.  "  Ah  ! 
never  put  me  in  a  boat  with  Shelley  alone  !  "  she  repeated. 
The  poet,  hearing  his  name,  glided  into  the  room,  with  his 
boyish  face  and  radiant  expression.  He  seized  some  bread 
and  grapes,  which  he  ate,  while  he  read  one  of  Calderon's 
dramas. 

Another  day  there  was  some  bustle  in  the  house,  as  a 
distinguished  stranger  from  Germany  was  coming  to  visit 
Shelley.  The  dinner  was  served  without  waiting  for  Shelley, 
and  the  stranger  was  telling  them  how  the  German  students 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNL  3S7 

of  English  literature  considered  Shelley  as  the  most  philo- 
sophical of  poets,  a  writer  of  transcendent  imagination, 
surpassing  all  our  popular  poets  in  depth  of  thought  and 
refinement.  One  of  the  party  remarked  that  genius  purifies  ; 
the  naked  statues  of  the  Greeks  are  modest,  the  draped  ones 
of  the  moderns  are  not  ;  when  all  at  once  the  ladies  hid  their 
faces  in  their  hands  in  mule  despair* before  a  most  unex- 
pected apparition.  It  was  Shelley,  in  the  costume  of  a 
marine  god,  dripping  with  sea-water,  his  hair  full  of  sea- 
weed. Quite  unmoved,  he  calmly  explained  his  adventure. 
While  taking  his  customary  sea-dip,  his  skittish  skiff  had 
played  him  one  of  her  usual  tricks  by  upsetting  all  his 
clothes  in  the  water,  and  he  could  not  get  to  his  room  with- 
out crossing  the  dining-room,  which  at  that  hour  was  always 
vacant.  A  few  minutes  later  he  reappeared  with  a  book  in 
his  hand,  and  said  triumphantly  :  "  I  have  recovered  this 
priceless  gem  from  the  wreck  !"  It  was  an  .^schylus.  He 
then  took  his  place,  unconscious  of  having  done  anything 
that  could  offend. 

At  the  Casa  Magni  Shelley  wrote  even  less 
than  at  Pisa  ;  he  gave  an  explanation  of  this 
to  Smith,  which  is  already  known  to  us  :  "I 
have  lived  too  long  near  Lord  Byron,  and  the 
sun  has  extinguished  the  glow-worm  ;  for  I  can- 
not hope  with  St.  John,  that  '  the  light  came 
into  the  world,  and  the  world  knew  it  not'  "  In 
his  solitude,  he  was  overcome  from  time  to  time 
by  discouragement  and  melancholy  ;  and  although 
he  had  no  intention  of  suicide,  he  wished  to  have 
the  possibility  of  escape  at  hand.  He  asked 
Trelawney  to  procure  prussic  acid  for  him.  "My 
wish  was  serious,^^  he  wrote  on  June  i8th,  "and 
sprang  from  the  desire  of  avoiding  needless  suf- 
fering. I  need  not  tell  you  1  have  no  in- 
tention of  suicide  at  present,  but  I  confess  it 
would  be  a  comfort  to  me  to  hold  in  my  posses- 
sion that  golden  key  to  the  chamber  of  perpetual 
rest.'' 

These  were,  however,  but  passing  moods  oc- 
casioned by  despair  at  the  deafness  of  the  world 
to  truths  he  would  fain  reveal.  Melancholy  was 
banished  by  the  charm   of  his    circle  of  friends, 

2  c  2 


3SS     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

by  Nature,  by  the  sea^  and  by  his  boat,  which 
dispersed  these  importunate  clouds  as  by  en- 
chantment.    On  June  i8th,  he  wrote  to  Gisborne: 

You  know  my  gross  ideas  of  music,  and  will  forgive  me 
when  I  say  that  I  listen  the  whole  evening  on  our  terrace  to 
the  simple  melodies  with  excessive  delight.  I  have  a  boat 
here  ;  it  cost  me  eighty  pounds,  and  reduced  me  to  some 
difficulty  in  point  of  money.  However,  it  is  swift  and  beau- 
tiful, and  appears  quite  a  vessel.  Williams  is  captain,  and 
we  drive  along  this  delightful  bay  in  the  evening  wind,  under 
the  summer  moon,  until  earth  appears  another  world.  Jane 
brings  her  guitar,  and  if  the  past  and  the  future  could  be 
obliterated,  the  present  would  content  me  so  well  that  I 
could  say  with  Faust  to  the  passing  moment,  "Remain thou, 
thou  art  so  beautiful  !  "  Claire  is  with  us,  and  the  death  of 
her  child*  seems  to  have  restored  her  to  tranquillity.  Her 
character  is  somewhat  altered.  She  is  vivacious  and  talka- 
tive, and,  though  she  teazes  me  sometimes,  I  like  her.  .  .  . 
Lord  Byron,  who  is  at  Leghorn,  has  fitted  up  a  splendid 
vessel  —  a  small  schooner  on  the  American  model — and 
Trelawney  is  to  be  captain.  How  long  the  fiery  spirit  of  our 
pirate  will  accommodate  itself  to  the  caprice  of  the  poet 
remains  to  be  seen,  .  .  . 

I  write  little  now.  It  is  impossible  to  compose  except 
under  the  strong  excitement  of  an  assurance  of  finding 
sympathy  in  what  you  write.  Imagine  Demosthenes  reciting 
a  philippic  to  the  waves  of  the  Atlantic.  Lord  Byron  is 
in  this  respect  fortunate.  He  touched  the  chord  to  which  a 
million  hearts  responded,  and  the  coarse  music  which  he 
produced  to  please  them,  disciplined  him  to  the  perfection  to 
which  he  now  approaches.  I  do  not  go  on  with  "  Charles  I." 
I  feel  too  little  certainty  of  the  future,  and  too  little  satis- 
faction with  regard  to  the  past  to  undertake  any  subject 
seriously  and  deeply.  1  stand,  as  it  were,  upon  a  precipice, 
which  I  have'ascended  with  great,  and  cannot  descend  with- 
out greater  peril,  and  I  am  content  if  the  heaven  above  me 
is  calm  for  the  passing  moment.  ...  I  have  read  several 
more  of  the  plays  of  Calderon.  Los  Dos  Avia7ites  del  Cielo 
is  the  finest,  if  I  except  one  scene  in  the  Devocion  de  la  Crtcz. 
I  read  Greek,  and. think  about  writing.  I  do  not  think  much 
of not  admiring  Metastasio  ;  the  nil  ad»nrari,  how- 
ever justly  applied,  seems  to  me  a  bad  sign  in  a  young  person. 


*  The  little  Allegra  had  just  died  at  the  Capuchin  con- 
vent of  Bagnacavallo,  in  the  Romagna,  where  Byron  had 
placed  her. 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNL  389 

I  had  rather  a  pupil  of  mine  had  conceived  a  frantic  passion 
for  Marini  himself,  than  that  she  had  found  out  the  critical 
defects  of  the  most  deficient  author.  When  she  becomes  of 
her  own  accord  full  of  genuine  admiration  for  the  finest  scene 
in  the  "  Purgatorio,"  or  the  opening  of  the  "  Paradiso,"  or 
some  other  neglected  piece  of  excellence,  hope  great  things.  . 

There  was  but  one  subject  besides  litera- 
ture that  never  failed  to  interest  Shelley,  viz. 
the  triumph  of  truth  and  goodness  in  ^  the 
world.  As  it  was  his  first,  so  was  it  his  last 
passion. 

"  It  seems  to  me,"  he  wrote  to  Horace  Smith,  "  that 
things  have  now  arrived  at  such  a  crisis  as  requires  every 
man  plainly  to  utter  his  sentiments  on  the  inefticacy  of  the 
existing  religions,  no  less  than  political  systems,  for  restrain- 
ing and  guiding  mankind.  Let  us  see  the  truth,  whatever 
that  may  be.  The  destiny  of  man  can  scarcely  be  so  de- 
graded that  he  was  born  only  to  die  ;  and  if  such  should  be  the 
case,  delusions,  especially  the  gross  and  preposterous  ones  of 
the  existing  religion,  can  scarcely  be  supposed  to  exalt  it. 
If  every  man  said  what  he  thought,  it  could  not  subsist  a  day. 
But  all,  more  or  less,  subdue  themselves  to  the  element  that 
surrounds  them,  and  contribute  to  the  evils  they  lament  by 
the  hypocrisy  that  springs  from  them.  England  appears  to 
be  in  a  desperate  condition  ;  Ireland  still  worse  ;  and  no 
class  of  those  who  subsist  on  the  public  labour  will  be  per- 
suaded that  thdr  claims  on  it  must  be  diminished.  But  the 
Government  must  content  itself  with  less  in  taxes,  the 
landholder  must  submit  to  receive  less  rent,  and  the  fund- 
holder  a  diminished  interest,  or  they  will  all  get  nothing,  or 
something  worse  than  nothing.  I  once  thought  to  study 
these  affairs,  and  write  or  act  in  them.  I  am  glad  that  my 
good  genius  said 'ny>-a/«.'  I  see  little  public  virtue,  and  I 
foresee  that  the  contest  will  be  one  of  blood  and  gold  ;  two 
elements  which,  however  much  to  my  taste  in  my  pockets 
and  my  veins,  I  have  an  objection  to  out  of  them.  ...  I  still 
inhabit  this  divine  bay,  reading  Spanish  dramas,  and  sailing 
and  listening  to  the  most  enchanting  music.  We  have  some 
friends  on  a  visit  to  us,  and  my  only  regret  is  that  the 
summer  must  ever  pass,  or  that  Mary  has  not  the  same 
predilection  lor  this  place  that  I  have,  which  v/ould  induce 
me  never  to  shift  my  quarters." 

In  this  last  letter  we  seem  to  have  Shelley's 
last  will,  in  a   political  and    religious  sense  ;    his 


•  39°     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND    THE  POET, 

thoughts  may  perhaps  be  more  lucid,  wider,  purer 
and  more  elevated,  but  they  are  essentially  the 
same  as  in  "Queen  Mab." 

A  curious  parallel  might  be  drawn  between 
Shelley's  first  poem  and  his  last,  "  The  Triumph 
of  Life."  One  is  the  embryo,  the  other  is  the 
full  bloom  of  his  genius. 

He  had  passed  from  the  inspiration  of  the 
eighteenth-century  philosophers  to  that  of  Plato 
and  Dante.  The  imitation  of  the  "  Divina  Com- 
media,"  even  in  the  rhythm  [rima  tersa)  is  mani- 
fest. Virgil,  "whose  modesty  led  him  to  affect 
to  copy  others,  though  he  created  afresh  all 
that  he  copied,"  was  no  longer  the  poet's  guide 
in  that  marvellous  vision  ;  but  in  his  place  was 
a  genius  of  later  times,  a  prose-poet,  who  has 
also  lifted  part  of  the  veil  of  Nature  and  Futurity 
— Rousseau.  Struck  by  the  strange  pageantry 
of  the  mysterious  chariot  and  the  still  more 
mysterious  Shape  it  bore  along,  the  poet  asks 
its  meaning,  and  a  voice  answers,  *^  Life  !  "  It 
is  the  voice  of  Rousseau,  whom  the  poet  recog- 
nises under  the  fantastic  and  Dantesque  appari- 
tion of  an  old  root  growing  with  strange  distortion 
out  of  the  hill-side.  Shelley  has  never  mingled 
with  more  pathetic  art  the  fantastic  creations 
of  his  brain  and  the  living  realities  around  him, 
incorporated  with  his  dream.  The  very  form  is 
Dantesque  : 

O  Heaven,  have  mercy  on  such  wretchedness  ! 
That  what  I  thought  was  an  old  root  which  grew 
To  strange  distortion  out  of  the  hill-side, 
Was,  indeed,  one  of  those  deluded  crew. 
And  that  the  grass  which  methought  hung  so  wide, 
And  white,  was  but  his  thin,  discoloured  hair  ; 
And  that  the  holes  it  vainly  sought  to  hide 
Were,  or  had  been,  eyes. 

Then,  passing  in  single  file  before  the   poet, 
come   Napoleon,    Voltaire,   Frederick,     Catherine 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNL  391 

■and  Leopold,  Plato,  Alexander,  and  his  master 
Aristotle,  Bacon  ;  the  flood  of  ages  and  of  men, 
all  the  contrasts,  all  the  contradictions,  all  the 
riddles  of  life.  We  can  only  guess  what  would 
have  been  Shelley's  interpretation  of  those  con- 
tradictions and  riddles  by  the  revelations  of  his 
other  poems.  The  vision  breaks  off  at  that 
terrible  inquiry  which  sums  up  all  Shelley's 
doubts,  quests,  and  aspirations  :  ''  Thai  what  is 
Life  ?  "  Death  soon  solved  his  doubts  by  opening 
to  him  its  infinite  horizon  of  peace  and  immor- 
tality. 

He  seems  to  have  had  a  distinct  presentiment 
of  approaching  death  when  he  penned  the  following 
poignant  lines  (1822)  : 

When  the  lamp  is  shattered, 

The  light  in  the  dust  lies  dead  ; 
When  the  cloud  is  scattered. 

The  rainbow's  glory  is  shed  ; 
When  the  lute  is  broken, 

Sweet  notes  are  remembered  not  ; 
When  the  lips  have  spoken, 

Loved  accents  are  soon  forgot. 

Towards  the  end  of  June,  1822,  Leigh  Hunt, 
the  long-expected  friend  and  guest,  at  last 
arrived,  accompanied  by  his  wife  and  seven 
children.  Through  Shelley's  care,  apartments 
had  been  prepared  for  him  in  Byron's  palace  at 
Pisa.  So  soon  as  Shelley  heard  of  his  friend's 
arrival  at  Leghorn,  he  and  Williams  put  to  sea 
on  board  the  Ariel,  freshly  done  up,  "to  make 
the  port  of  Leghorn  in  good  style,"  as  Shelley 
said.  Leigh  Hunt's  eldest  son,  Thornton  Hunt, 
describes,  in  his  interesting  Memoir,*  the  affec- 
tionate emotion  with  which  the  friends  met  again 
in  Italy  : 

Some  years  elapsed  between  the  night  when  I  saw 
Shelley  pack  up  his  pistols — which  he  allowed  me  to  ex- 

"*  The  Atlantic  Monthly^  February,  1863. 


392     SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 

amine — for  his  departure  for  the  South,  and  the  moment 
when,  after  our  own  arrival  in  Italy,  my  attention  was  again 
called  to  his  presence,  by  the  shrill  sound  of  his  voice  as  he 
rushed  into  my  father's  arms,  which  he  did  with  an  im- 
petuosity and  fervour  scarcely  to  be  imagined  by  any  one 
who  did  not  know  the  intensity  of  his  feelings,  and  the  deep 
nature  of  his  affection  for  that  friend.  I  remember  his  crying 
out  that  he  was  "  so  inexpressibly  delighted  !  you  cannot 
think  how  inexpressibly  happy  it  makes  me  !" 


He  endeavoured,  however,  to  express  his  happi- 
ness in  a  piece  of  verse,  the  last  he  ever  wrote, 
which  unfortunately  has  been  lost.  He  accom- 
panied the  Hunts  to  Pisa,  in  order  to  see  them 
comfortably  settled  in  the  Lanfranchi  Palace,  and 
to  make  final  arrangements  about  The  Liberal, 
Byron,  meanwhile,  had  allowed  himself  to  be 
persuaded  by  his  English  friends,  Moore  in  par- 
ticular, that  the  projected  periodical  would  be 
prejudicial  both  to  his  fame  and  his  interests  ; 
and  it  was  against  the  grain  that  he  prepared  to 
join  in  a  venture  that  seemed  to  Moore  to  court 
bankruptcy.  Shelley,  therefore,  found  him  dis- 
inclined to  fulfil  his  engagement,  and  was  deeply 
disappointed.  He  was  aware  that  Byron  thought 
too  slightingly  of  Hunt's  character  as  well  as  of 
his  talents,  for  any  lasting  agreement  between 
them  ;  and  as  he  had  not  forgiven  him  his  treat- 
ment of  Claire,  neither  could  he  forgive  him  now 
for  not  sharing  his  own  generous  feelings  towards 
his  friend. 

A  serious  misunderstanding  might  have  arisen 
between  Byron  and  Shelley,  had  not  the  latter 
been  bent  on  conciliation  in  the  interests  of  Hunt 
himself. 

But  Shelley  was  acutely  sensitive  in  all  that 
regarded  friendship,  and  his  last  days  were  sad- 
dened by  these  difficulties. 

A  deep  melancholy  pervades  his  last  letters, 
from  Pisa  and  Leghorn;   they  seem  to  forebode 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNL  393 

the  final  catastrophe.     On  July  4th  he  writes  to 
Jane  Williams  from  Pisa  : 

You  will  probably  see  Williams  before  I  can  disentangle 
myself  from  the  affairs  with  which  I  am  now  surrounded. 
I  return  to  Leghorn  to-night,  and  shall  urge  him  to  sail  with 
the  first  fair  wind  without  expecting  me.  I  have  thus  the 
pleasure  of  contributing  to  your  happiness  when  deprived  of 
every  other,  and  of  leaving  you  no  other  subject  of  regret, 
but  the  absence  of  one  scarcely  worth  regretting.  I  fear  you 
are  solitary  and  melancholy  at  Villa  Magni,  and,  in  the 
intervals  of  the  greater  and  more  serious  distress  in  which  I 
am  compelled  to  sympathise  here,  I  figure  to  myself  the 
countenance  which  has  been  the  source  of  such  consolation 
to  me,  shadowed  by  a  veil  of  sorrow. 

How  soon  those  hours  past,  and  how  slowly  they  return, 
to  pass  so  soon  again,  and  perhaps  for  ever,  in  which  we 
have  lived  together  so  intimately  and  happily  !  Adieu,  my 
dearest  friend.  I  only  write  these  lines  for  the  pleasure  of 
tracing  what  will  meet  your  eyes.  Mary  will  tell  you  all  the 
news. 

Pis-s  7«/k  4///,  1822. 
My  dearest  Mary, 

.  .  .  Things  are  in  the  worst  possible  situation  with 
respect  to  poor  Hunt.  I  found  Marianne  in  a  desperate  state 
of  health,  and  on  our  arrival  at  Pisa,  sent  for  Vacc;\.  He 
decides  that  her  case  is  hopeless,  and  that  although  it  will 
be  lingering,  must  inevitably  end  fcitally.  .  .  This  intelli- 
gence has  extinguished  the  last  spark  of  poor  Hunt's  spirits, 
low  enough  before.  .  .  .  Lord  Byron  is  at  this  moment  on 
the  point  of  leaving  Tuscany.  The  Gambas  have  been  exiled, 
and  he  declares  his  intention  of  following  their  fortunes.  .  .  . 
Trelawney  is  here,  without  instructions,  moody  and  disap- 
pointed. But  it  is  the  worst  for  poor  Hunt,  unless  the  present 
storm  should  blow  over  ...  he  arrived  here,  with  no  other 
remnant  of  his  ^400  than  a  debt  of  sixty  crowns.  Lord 
Byron  must  of  course  furnish  the  requisite  funds  at  present, 
as  I  cannot  ;  but  he  seems  inclined  to  depart  without  the 
necessary  explanations  and  arrangements  due  to  such  a 
situation  as  Hunt's  ...  he  offers  him  the  copyright  of  the 
'Vision  of  Judgment'  for  his  first  number.  This  oftcr,  if 
sincere,  is  more  chan  enough  to  set  up  the  journal,  and,  if 
sincere,  will  set  everything  right. 

How  are  you,  my  best  Mary?  Write  especially  how  is 
your  health,  and  how  your  spirits  are,  and  whether  you  are 
not  more  reconciled  to  staying  at  Lerici,  at  least  during  the 


394    SHELLEY^THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

summer.    You  have  no  idea  how  I  am  hurried  and  occupied  ; 
I  have  not  a  moment's  leisure,  but  will  write  by  next  post. 
Ever,  dearest  Mary, 

Yours  affectionately, 

s. 

I  have  found  the  translation  of  the  symposium. 

Jane  Williams  replied  to  Shelley's  melancholy 
note  by  one  still  more  melancholy,  in  which,  after 
expressing  her  anxiety  at  the  continued  absence 
of  Neddino  (her  husband),  she  added  in  a  post- 
script a  question  to  which  the  event  afterwards 
gave  so  tragic  a  reply  :  "  Why  do  you  say  you 
may  never  enjoy  such  happy  moments  again  ? 
Are  you  going  to  join  your  friend  Plato  ?  " 

On  July  8th,  Shelley  and  Williams  decided  on 
leaving  Leghorn,  and  set  sail  for  Lerici,  We  can 
have  no  better  informed  or  more  sympathetic 
narrator  of  the  terrible  catastrophe  that  followed 
than  the  widow  of  the  poet. 

"  Having  heard  that  Hunt  had  left  Genoa,"  she  writes  a 
few  days  after  the  event  (15th  August)  to  Mrs.  Gisborne, 
"  Shelley,  Edward,  and  Captain  Roberts  departed  in  our  boat 
for  Leghorn  to  receive  him.  I  was  then  just  better,  had 
begun  to  crawl  from  my  bedroom  to  the  terrace  ;  but  bad 
spirits  succeeded  to  ill  health,  and  this  departure  of  Shelley's 
seemed  to  add  insufferably  to  my  misery.  I  could  not  endure 
that  he  should  go.  I  called  him  back  two  or  three  times, 
and  told  him  that  if  I  did  not  see  him  soon  I  would  go  to 
Pisa  with  the  child.  I  cried  bitterly  when  he  went  away. 
They  went,  and  Jane,  Claire,  and  I  remained  alone  with  the 
children.  I  could  not  walk  out,  and  though  I  gradually 
gathered  strength,  it  was  slowly,  and  my  ill  spirits  increased. 
In  my  letters  to  him  I  entreated  him  to  return — 'the  feeling 
that  some  misfortune  would  happen,'  I  said,  'haunted  me.' 
I  feared  for  the  child  ;  for  the  idea  of  danger  connected  with 
him  never  struck  me.  When  Jane  and  Claire  took  their 
evening  walk,  I  used  to  patrol  the  terrace,  oppressed  with 
wretchedness,  yet  gazing  on  the  most  beautiful  scene  in  the 
world.  ...  I  had  a  letter  or  two  from  Shelley  mentioning 
the  difficulties  he  had  in  establishing  the  Hunts,  and  that  he 
was  unable  to  fix  the  time  of  his  return.  Thus  a  week  passed. 
On  Monday,  8th,  Jane  had  a  letter  from  Edward,  dated 
Saturday  ;  he  said  that  he  waited  at  Leghorn  for  Shelley, 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA    .UAGNL  395 

who  was  nt  Pisa  ;  that  Shelley's  return  was  certain  ;  'but,'  he 
continued,  'if  he  should  not  come  by  Monday,  I  will  come 
in  a  felucca,  and  you  may  expect  me  Tuesday  evening  at 
furthest.' 

"  This  was  Monday,  the  fatal  Monday,  but  with  us  it 
was  stormy  all  day,  and  we  did  not  at  all  suppose  that 
they  could  put  to  sea.  At  twelve  at  night  we  had  a 
thunderstorm.  Tuesday  it  rained  all  day,  and  was  calm 
(the  sky  wept  on  their  graves).  On  Wednesday  the  wind 
was  fair  from  Leghorn,  and  in  the  evening  several  feluccas 
arrived  thence.  One  brought  word  that  they  had  sailed 
Monday,  but  we  did  not  believe  them.  Thursday  was 
another  day  of  fair  wind  ;  and  when  twelve  at  night  came, 
and  we  did  not  see  the  tall  sails  of  the  little  boat  double  the 
promontory  before  us,  we  began  to  fear,  not  the  truth,  but 
some  illness— some  disagreeable  news  for  their  detention. 
'  Jane  got  so  uneasy  that  she  determined  to  proceed  the  next 
day  to  Leghorn  in  a  boat  to  see  what  was  the  matter. 
Friday  came,  and  with  it  a  heavy  sea  and  bad  wind  ;  Jane 
however,  resolved  to  be  rowed  to  Leghorn,  since  no  boat 
could  sail,  and  busied  herself  in  preparations.  1  wished  her 
to  wait  for  letters,  since  Friday  was  letter-day.  She  would 
not,  but  the  sea  detained  her  ;  the  swell  rose  so  that  no  boat 
would  venture  out.  At  twelve  at  noon  our  letters  came. 
There  was  one  from  Hunt  to  Shelley;  it  said,  'Pray  write 
to  tell  us  how  you  got  home,  for  they  say  that  you  had  bad 
weather  after  you  sailed  Monday,  and  we  are  anxious.'  The 
paper  fell  from  me  ;  I  trembled  all  over.  Jane  read  it. 
^Then  it  is  all  over!'  she  said.  'No,  my  dear  Jane,' 
I  cried  '  it  is  not  all  over  ;  but  this  suspense  is  dreadful  ! 
Come  with  me,  we  will  go  to  Leghorn  ;  we  will  post  to  be 
swift  and  learn  our  fate.'  We  crossed  to  Lerici,  despair  in 
our  hearts.  They  raised  our  spirits  there  by  telling  us  that 
no  accident  had  been  heard  of,  and  that  it  must  have  been 
known,  etc.  But  still  our  fear  was  great,  and,  without  rest- 
ing, we  posted  to  Pisa.  It  must  have  been  fearful  to  see  us 
— two  poor,  wild,  aghast  creatures— driving  (like  Matilda) 
towards  the  sea  to  learn  if  we  were  to  be  for  ever  doomed  to 
misery.  I  knew  that  Hunt  was  at  Pisa  at  Lord  Byron's  house, 
but  I  thought  that  Lord  Byron  was  at  Leghorn.  I  settled  that 
•we  should  drive  to  Casa  Lanfranchi,  that  I  should  get  out  and 
ask  the  fearful  question  of  Hunt,  '  Do  you  know  anything  of 
Shelley  ?'  On  entering  Pisa  the  idea  of  seeing  Hunt  for  the 
first  time  for  four  years  under  such  circumstances,  and 
asking  him  such  a  question,  was  so  terrific  to  me  that  it  was 
with  dilifîculty  that  I  prevented'  myself  from  going  into  con- 
vulsions— my  struggles  were  dreadful.  They  knocked  at 
the  door,  and  some  one  called  out  '  chi  e  ?  '      It  was  the 


396    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

Guiccioli's  maid.  Lord  Byron  was  at  Pisa  ;  Hunt  was  in- 
bed  ;  so  I  was  to  see  Lord  Byron  instead  of  turn.  This  was 
a  great  relief  to  me  ;  I  staggered  upstairs  ;  the  Guiccioli 
came  to  meet  me  smiling,  while  I  could  hardly  say,  '  Where 
is  he — Sape  te  alcuna  cosa  di  Shelley .?'  They  knew  nothing; 
he  had  left  Pisa  on  Sunday  ;  on  Monday  he  had  sailed  ;. 
there  had  been  bad  weather  Monday  afternoon  ;  more  they 
knew  not.  Both  Lord  Byron  and  the  lady  have  told  me 
since  that  on  that  terrific  evening  I  looked  more  like  a 
ghost  than  a  woman.  Light  seemed  to  emanate  from  my 
features  ;  my  face  was  very  white  ;  I  looked  like  marble. 
Alas,  I  had  risen  almost  from  a  bed  of  sickness  for  this 
journey.  I  had  travelled  all  day  ;  it  was  now  twelve  at  night, 
and  we,  refusing  to  rest,  proceeded  to  Leghorn  ;  not  in 
despair,  no,  for  then  we  must  have  died,  but  with  sufficient 
hope  to  keep  up  the  agitation  of  the  spirits  which  was  all  my 
hfe.  It  was  past  two  in  the  morning  when  we  arrived.  They 
took  us  to  the  -vyrong  inn.  Neither  Trelawney  nor  Captain 
Roberts  was  there,  nor  did  we  exactly  know  where  they 
were,  so  we  were  obliged  to  wait  until  daylight.  We  threw 
ourselves  dressed  on  our  beds  and  slept  a  little,  but  at  six 
o'clock  we  went  to  one  or  two  inns  to  ask  for  one  or  the 
other  of  these  gentlemen.  We  found  Roberts  at  the 
'Globe.'  He  came  down  to  us  with  a  face  which  seemed 
to  tell  us  that  the  worst  was  true  ;  and  here  we 
learned  all  that  had  occurred  during  the  week  they 
had  been  absent  from  us,  and  under  what  circumstances 
they  had  departed  on  their  return.  Shelley  had  passed  most 
of  the  time  at  Pisa  arranging  the  affairs  of  the  Hunts  and 
screwing  Lord  Byron's  mind  to  the  sticking-place  about  the 
journal.  He  had  found  this  a  difficult  task  at  first,  but  at 
length  he  had  succeeded  to  his  heart's  content  with  both 
points.  Mrs.  Mason  said  that  she  saw  him  in  better  health 
and  spirits  than  she  had  ever  known  him,  when  he  took 
leave  of  her  Sunday,  July  yth,  his  face  burnt  by  the  sun,  and 
his  heart  light  that  he  had  succeeded  in  rendering  the  Hunts 
tolerably  comfortable.  Edward  had  remained  at  Leghorn. 
On  Monday,  July  8th,  during  the  morning,  they  were  em- 
ployed in  buying  many  things,  eatables,  etc.,  for  our  solitude. 
There  had  been  a  thunderstorm  early,  but  about  noon  the 
weather  was  fine,  and  the  wind  right  fair  for  Lerici.  They 
were  impatient  to  be  gone.  Roberts  said,  '  Stay  until  to- 
morrow, to  see  if  the  weather  is  settled  '  ;  and  Shelley 
might  have  stayed,  but  Edward  was  in  so  great  an  anxiety 
to  reach  home— saying  they  would  get  there  in  seven  hours 
with  that  wind— that  they  sailed,  Shelley, being  in  one  of  those 
extravagant  fits  of  good  spirits  in  which  you  have  sometimes 
seen  him.     Roberts  went  out  to  the  end  of  the  mole,  and 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNI.  397 

watched  them  out  of  sight.     They  sailed  at  one,  and  went 
•off  at  the  rate  of  about  seven  knots.     About  three,  Roberts, 
who  was  still  on  the  mole,  saw  wind  coming  from  the  gulf, 
or  rather  what  the   Italians  call  a  temporale.      Anxious  to 
know  how  the  boat  would  weather  the  storm,  he  got  leave  to 
go  up  the  tower,  and  with  the  glass  discovered  them  about 
ten    miles    out  at   sea,  off  Via   Reggio  ;    they  were   taking 
in  their   topsails.    'The  haze  of  the  storm,'  he  said, 'hid 
them   from   me,   and    I    saw   them   no   more.      When    the 
storm   cleared    I    looked    again,    fancying    that    I    should 
see  them  on  their  return   to   us  ;   but   there   was   no   boat 
on   the  sea.'     This,  then,  was   all  we   knew  ;   yet  we  did 
not    despair.      They    might    have    been    driven    over    to 
Corsica,  and,  not  knowing  the  coast,  have  gone  God  knows 
where.     Reports  favoured  this  belief.     It  was  even  said  that 
they  had   been  seen  in   the  Gulf.      We  resolved  to  return 
with  all  possible  speed.     We  sent  a  courier  to  go  from  tower 
to  tower  along  the  coast  to  know  if  anything  had  been  seen 
or  found,  and  at  9  a.m.  we  quitted  Leghorn,  stopped  but  one 
moment  at  Pisa,  and  proceeded  towards  Lerici.     When  at 
two  miles  from  Via  Reggio,  we  rode  down  to  that  town  to 
know  if  they  knew  anything.     Here  our  calamity  first  began 
to  break  on  us      A  little  boat  and  a  water-cask  had  been 
found  five  miles  off  ;  they  had  manufactured  a  piccolissima 
lancia  of  thin  planks,  stitched  by  a  shoemaker,  just  to  let 
them  run  on  shore  without  wetting  themselves,  as  our  boat 
drew  four  feet  water.     The  description  of  that  found  tallied 
with  this  ;  but  then  this  boat  was  very  cumbersome,  and  in 
bad  weather  they  might  have  been  easily  led  to  throw  it 
overboard.      The  cask  frightened  me  most,  but  the  same 
reason  might  in  some  sort  be  given  for  that.    I  must  tell  you 
that   Jane  and  I  were  not  now  alone  .  Trelawney  accom- 
panied us  back  to  our  home.    We  journeyed  on,  and  reached 
the  Magra  about  half-past  10  p.m.     I  cannot  describe  to  you 
what  I  felt  in  the  first  moment  when,  fording  this  river,  I  felt 
the  water  splash  about  our  wheels.      I    was    suffocated,   L 
gasped  for  breath  ;  I  thought  I  should  have  gone  into  con- 
vulsions, and  I  struggled  violently  that  Jane  might  not  per- 
ceive it.     Looking  down  the  river,  I  saw  the  two  great  lights 
burning  at  the  foce.     A  voice  from  within  me  seemed   to 
cry  aloud,  '  That  is  his  grave  !  '     After  passing  the  river  I 
gradually  recovered.     Arriving  at  Lerici,  we  were  obliged  to 
cross  our  little  bay  in  a  boat.     San  Arenzo  was  illuminated 
for  a  festa.     What  a  scene  !     The  waving  sea,  the  sirocco 
wind,  the  lights  of  the  town  towards  which  we  rowed,  and 
our  own  desolate  hearts,  that  coloured  all  with  a  shroud. 
We  landed.     Nothing  had  been  heard  of  them.     This  was 
Saturday,  July  13th.    And  thus  we  waited  until  Thursday, 


398    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

July  25th,  thrown  about  by  hope  and  fear.  We  sent 
messengers  along  the  coast  towards  Genoa,  and  to  Via 
Reggio.  Nothing  had  been  found  more  than  the  Imicetta; 
reports  were  brought  to  us — we  hoped — and  yet  to  tell  you 
all  the  agony  we  endured  during  those  twelve  days,  would 
be  to  make  you  conceive  a  universe  of  pain — each  moment 
intolerable,  and  giving  place  to  one  still  worse.  The  people 
of  the  country,  too,  added  to  one's  discomfort.  They  ai'e  like 
wild  savages  ;  on  festas  the  men  and  women  and  children  in 
different  bands — the  sexes  always  separate — pass  the  whole 
night  in  dancing  on  the  sands  close  to  our  door,  running  into 
the  sea,  then  back  again,  and  screaming  all  the  time  one 
perpetual  air — the  most  detestable  in  the  world  ;  then  the 
sirocco  perpetually  blew,  and  the  sea  for  ever  moaned  their 
dirge.  On  Thursday,  25th,  Trelawney  left  us  to  go  to  Leghorn, 
to  see  what  was  doing  or  what  could  be  done.  On  Friday  I 
was  \'ery  ill,  but  as  evening  came  on  I  said  to  Jane,  '  If 
anything  had  been  found  on  the  coast,  Trelawney  would 
have  returned  to  let  us  know.  He  has  not  returned,  so  I 
hope.'  About  seven  o'clock  p.m.  he  did  return  ;  all  was 
over,  all  was  quiet  now,  they  had  been  found  washed  on 
shore.     Well  !  all  this  was  to  be  endured. 

"Well,  what  more  have  I  to  say?  The  next  day  we 
returned  to  Pisa,  and  here  we  are  still.  Days  pass  away, 
one  after  another,  and  we  live  thus  We  are  all  together  ; 
we  shall  quit  Italy  together.  Jane  must  proceed  to  London; 
if  letters  do  not  alter  my  views  I  shall  remain  in  Paris. 
Thus  we  live,  seeing  the  Hunts  now  and  then.  Poor  Hunt 
has  suffered  terribly,  as  you  may  guess.  Lord  Byron  is  very 
kind  to  me,  and  comes  with  the  Guiccioli  to  see  me  often. 
To-day — this  day — the  sun  shining  in  the  sky — they  are 
gone  to  the  desolate  sea-coast  to  perform  the  last  offices  to 
their  earthly  remains.  Hunt,  Lord  Byron,  and  Trelawney. 
The  quarantine  laws  would  not  permit  us  to  remove  them 
sooner,  and  now  only  on  condition  that  we  burn  them  to 
ashes.  That  I  do  not  dislike.  His  rest  shall  be  at  Rome 
beside  my  child,  where  one  day  I  also  shall  join  them. 
'  Adonais  '  is  not  Keats's,  it  is  his  own  elegy— he  b"ids  you 
there  go  to  Rome — I  have  seen  the  spot  where  he  now  lies — • 
the  sticks  that  mark  the  spot  where  the  sands  cover  him  — 
he  shall  not  be  there,  it  is  too  near  Via  Reggio — they  are 
now  about  this  fearful  office — and  I  live  !  " 

The  corpse  of  Shelley  had  been  found  on  the 
coast  near  Via  Reggio:  the  face  and  hands,  and  all 
parts  of  the  body  not  protected  by  the  clothing» 
were  fleshless. 


1 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA   MAGNL  399 

"The  tall,  slight  figure,"  writes  Trelawney,  who  was  called 
to  identify  it,  "the  jacket,  the  volume  of  ^schylus*  in  one 
pocket,  and  Keats's  Poems  in  the  other — doubled  back  as  if 
the  reader,  in  the  act  of  reading,  had  hastily  thrust  it  away — 
were  all  too  familiar  to  me  to  leave  a  doubt  on  my  mind  that 
this  mutilated  corpse  was  any  other  than  Shelley's.  The 
body  of  Williams,  much  more  mutilated  still,  was  found  on 
the  coast,  three  miles  from  that  of  Shelley.  .  .  .  Williams  was 
the  only  one  of  the  three  who  could  swim,  and  it  is  probable 
he  was  the  last  survivor.  .  .  .  Shelley  always  declared  that 
in  case  of  wreck,  he  would  vanish  instantly,  and  not  imperil 
valuable  lives  by  permitting  others  to  aid  in  saving  his,  which 
he  looked  upon  as  valueless.  It  was  not  until  after  three 
weeks  after  the  wreck  of  the  boat  that  a  third  body  was  found 
— four  miles  from  the  other  two.  This  I  concluded  to  be 
that  of  the  sailor  boy,  Charles  Vivian. 

"  I  mounted  my  horse  and  rode  to  the  Gulf  of  Spezzia, 
put  up  my  horse,  and  walked  until  I  caught  sight  of  the  lone 
house  on  the  sea-shore  in  which  Shelley  and  Williams  had 
dwelt,  and  where  their  widows  still  lived.  ...  As  I  stood  on 
the  threshold  of  their  house,  the  bearer,  or  rather  confirrner 
of  news,  which  would  rack  every  fibre  of  their  quivering 
frames  to  the  utmost,  I  paused,  and  looking  at  the  sea,  my 
memory  reverted  to  our  joyous  parting  only  a  few  days 
before. 

"  The  two  families,  then,  had  all  been  in  the  verandah, 
overhanging  a  sea  so  clear  and  calm  that  every  star  was 
reflected  on  the  water  as  if  it  had  been  a  mirror  ;  the  young 
mothers  singing  some  merry  tune,  with  the  accompaniment 
of  a  guitar.  Shelley's  shrill  laugh— I  heard  it  still— rang  in 
my  ears,  with  Williams's  friendly  hail,  the  general  '  buona 
notte  '  of  all  the  joyous  party,  and  the  earnest  entreaty  to 
me  to  return  as  soon  as  possible,  and  not  to  forget  the  com- 
missions they  had  severally  given  me.  I  was  in  a  small  boat 
beneath  them,  slowly  rowing  myself  on  board  the  '  Bolivar,' 
at  anchor  in  the  bay,  loath  to  part  from  what  I  verily  believed 
to  have  been  at  that  time,  the  most  united  and  happiest  set 
of  human  beings  in  the  whole  world.  And  now  by  the  blow 
of  an  idle  puff  of  wind  the  scene  was  changed.  Such  is 
human  happiness. 

"  My  reverie  was  broken  by  a  shriek  from  the  nurse 
Caterina,  as  crossing  the  hall  she  saw  me  in  the  doorway. 
After  asking  her  a  few  questions,  1  went  up  the  stairs,  and, 

*  Mr.  Dowden,  who  has  seen  the  volume  at  Boscombe 
Manor,  where  all  the  relics  of  Shelley  are  collected,  by  the 
filial  piety  of  his  son,  asserts  that  it  is  a  Sophocles. 


400    SHELLEY— THE  MAiV  AiVD   THE  POET. 

unannounced,  entered  the  room.  I  neither  spoke,  nor  did  they 
tjuestion  me.  Mrs.  Shelley's  large  gray  eyes  were  fixed  on 
my  face.  I  turned  away.  Unable  to  bear  this  horrid  silence, 
with  a  convulsive  effort  she  excfeimed,  '  Is  there  no  hope?' 
I  did  rot  answer,  but  left  the  room,  and  sent  the  servant  with 
the  children  to  them.  The  next  day  I  prevailed  on  them  to 
return  with  me  to  Pisa." 

It  was  Trelawney,  again,  who  undertook,  in 
conformity  with  Tuscan  law,  to  burn  the  bodies. 
He  and  Byron  consulted  together  in  order  to 
render  the  cremation  a  solemn  ceremony,  recalling 
as  far  as  possible  the  ceremonial  of  ancient  times. 
A  funeral  oration  alone  was  wanting.  ''We  had 
lost,"  says  Trelawney,  "  our  Hellenic  bard."  The 
body  of  Edward  Williams  was  burned  on  August 
15th,  and  that  of  Shelley  on  the  following  day. 

Byron  assumed  a  somewhat  theatrical  and 
Hamlet-like  demeanour  on  the  occasion. 

"When  Bvron,"  says  Trelawney,  "saw  the  shapeless 
mass  of  bones  and  flesh"— [all  that  now  remained  of 
Williams]  —"  '  Is  that  a  human  body  ?  '  he  exclaimed.  '  Why, 
it  is  more  like  the  carcass  of  a  sheep,  or  any  other  animal, 
than  a  man.  This  is  a  satire  on  our  pride  and  folly.'  I 
pointed  to  the  letters  E.  E.  W.  on  the  black  silk  hand- 
kerchief. Byron,  looking  on,  muttered  '  The  entrails  of  a 
worm  hold  together  longer  than  the  potter's  clay  of  which 
man  is  made.  Hold  !  let  me  see  the  jaw,'  he  added,  as  they 
were  removing  the  skull  ;  *  I  can  recognise  any  one  by  the 
teeth  with  whom  I  have  talked.  I  always  watch  the  lips 
and  mouth  ;  they  tell  what  the  tongue  and  eyes  try  to 
conceal.  .  .  Don't  repeat  this  with  me,'  Byron  said;  'let 
my  carcass  rot  where  it  falls.' 

"The  next  day  Byron  and  Leigh  Hunt  arrived  in  the 
carriage,  attended  by  soldiers,  and  the  health  officer  as 
before.  The  lonely  and  grand  scenery  that  surrounded  us 
so  exactly  harmonised  with  Shelley's  genius  that  I  could 
imagine  his  spirit  soaring  over  us.  The  sea,  with  the 
islands  of  Gorgona,  Capraji,  and  Elba,  was  before  us  ;  old 
battlemented  watch-towers  stretched  along  the  coast,  backed 
by  the  marble-crested  Apennines,  glistening  in  the  sun, 
picturesque  from  their  diversified  outlines,  and  not  a  human 
■dwelling  was  in  sight.  As  I  thought  of  the  delight 
Shelley  felt  in   such   scenes   of  loneliness   and   grandeur, 


SHELLEY  AT  CASA    MAGNL  401 

•whilst  living,  I  felt  we  were  no  better  than  a  herd  of  wolves 
or  a  pack  of  wild  dogs,  in  tearing  out  his  battered  and  naked 
body  from  the  pure  yellow  sand  that  lay  so  lightly  over 
it,  to  drag  him  back  to  the  light  of  day  ;  but  the  dead  have 
no  voice,  nor  had  I  power  to  check  the  sacrifice.  The  work 
went  on  silently  in  the  deep  and  unresisting  sand  ;  not  a 
word  was  spoken,  for  the  Italians  have  a  touch  of  sentiment, 
and  their  feelings  are  easily  excited  into  sympathy.  Even 
Byron  was  silent  and  thoughtful.  We  were  startled  and 
drawn  together  by  a  dull  hollow  sound  that  followed  the 
blow  of  a  mattock  ;  the  iron  had  struck  a  skull,  and  the 
body  was  soon  uncovered.  Lime  had  been  strewn  on  it  ; 
this,  or  decomposition,  had  the  effect  of  staining  it  of  a  dark 
and  ghastly  indigo  colour.  Byron  asked  me  to  preserve 
the  skull  for  him  ;  but  remembering  that  he  had  formerly 
used  one  as  a  drinking-cup,  I  was  determined  Shelley's 
should  not  be  so  profaned.  The  limbs  did  not  separate  from 
the  trunk,  as  in  the  case  of  Williams's  body,  so  that  the 
corpse  was  removed  entire  into  the  furnace.  I  have  taken 
the  precaution  of  having  more  and  larger  pieces  of  timber, 
in  consequence  of  my  experience  of  the  day  before  of  the 
difficulty  of  consuming  a  corpse  in  the  open  air  with  our 
apparatus.  After  the  fire  was  well  kindled  we  repeated  the 
ceremony  of  the  previous  day,  and  more  wine  was  poured 
over  Shelley's  dead  body  than  he  had  consumed  during  his 
life.  This,  with  the  oil  and  salt,  made  the  yellow  flames 
glisten  and  quiver.  The  heat  from  the  sun  and  the  fire  was 
so  intense  that  the  atmosphere  was  tremulous  and  wavy. 
The  corpse  fell  open  and  the  heart  was  laid  bare.  The 
frontal  bone  of  the  skull,  where  it  had  been  struck  with  the 
mattock,  fell  off;  and  as  the  back  of  the  head  rested  on  the 
red-hot  bottom  bars  of  the  furnace  the  brains  literally 
seethed,  bubbled,  and  boiled,  as  in  a  cauldron,  for  a  very 
long  time. 

"  Byron  could  not  face  this  scene  ;  he  withdrew  to  the 
beach,  and  swam  off  to  the  Bolivar.  Leigh  Hunt  remained 
in  the  carriage.  The  fire  was  so  fierce  as  to  produce  a  white 
heat  on  the  iron,  and  to  reduce  its  contents  to  gray  ashes. 
The  only  portions  that  were  not  consumed  were  some  frag- 
ments of  bones — the  jaw  and  the  skull— but  what  surprised 
us  all  was  that  the  heart  remained  entire.  In  snatching 
this  relic  from  the  fiery  furnace  my  hand  was  severely 
burnt. 

"After  cooling  the  iron  machine  in  the  sea,  I  collected  the 
human  ashes  and  placed  them  in  a  box,  which  I  took  on 
board  the  Bolivar.  Byron  and  Hunt  retraced  their  steps  to 
their  home,  and  the  officers  and  soldiers  returned  to  their 
quarters." 

2   D 


402    SHELLEY— THE  MAN  AND  THE  POET. 

Shelley's  ashes  were  deposited  by  Trelawney 
in  the  English  cemetery  at  Rome,  near  those 
of  his  little  son  William,  and  his  brother  poet 
John  Keats.  Leigh  Hunt  inscribed  cor  cordium 
on  the  stone,  and  Trelawney  added  the  following 
lines  from  Ariel's  song  in  the  Tempest  : 

Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade, 
But  doth  suffer  a  sea  change 
Into  something  rich  and  strange. 

In  the  parish  church  of  Christchurch,  Hants, 
there  is  a  monument  of  melancholy  aspect,  which 
recalls  alike  the  image  of  Christ  taken  down  from 
the  cross  and  placed  in  His  mother's  arms,  and 
that  of  a  mournful,  weeping  Muse  contemplating 
in  silent  sorrow  the  death-disfigured  countenance 
of  her  dearest  votary.  This  monument  by  Weeks, 
erected  by  filial  piety  in  the  shadow  of  a  country 
church,  to  Shelley  and  Mary,  awaits  the  hour 
when  England  shall  atone  for  her  ingratitude  by 
placing  it  in  Westminster  Abbey  by  the  side  of 
the  effigies  of  Milton,  Spenser,  and  Shakespeare. 


APPENDIX. 


FRAGMENT  OF   "ST.    IRVYNE." 

GINOTTI    RELATES    HIS    HISTORY   TO   WOLFSTEIN. 

"From  my  earliest  youth,  before  it  was  quenched  by 
complete  satiation,  airiosify,  and  a  desire  of  unveiling 
the  latent  mysteries  of  Nature,  was  the  passion  by  which 
all  the  other  emotions  of  my  mind  were  intellectually 
organised.  This  desire  first  led  me  to  cultivate,  and 
with  success,  the  various  branches  of  learning  which  led 
to  the  gates  of  wisdom.  I  then  applied  myself  to  the 
cultivation  of  philosophy,  and  the  eclat  with  which  I 
pursued  it,  exceeded  my  most  sanguine  expectations. 
Love  I  cared  not  for  ;  and  wondered  why  men  perversely 
sought  to  ally  themselves  with  weakness.  Natural 
philosophy  at  last  became  the  peculiar  science  to  which 
I  directed  my  eager  inquiries  ;  thence  was  I  led  into  a 
train  of  labyrinthic  meditations.  I  thought  of  death — I 
shuddered  when  I  reflected,  and  shrank  in  horror  from 
the  idea,  selfish  and  self-interested  as  I  was,  of  entering  a 
new  existence  to  which  I  was  a  stranger.  I  must  either 
dive  into  the  recesses  of  futurity,  or  I  must  not,  I  can- 
not die. — '  Will  not  this  nature — will  not  the  matter  of 
which  it  is  composed,  exist  to  all  eternity  ?  Ah  !  I 
know  it  will  ;  and,  by  the  exertions  of  the  energies  with 
which  Nature  has  gifted  me,  well  I  know  it  shall.' 
This  was  my  opinion  at  that  time  :  I  then  believed  that 
there  existed  no  God.  Ah  !  at  what  an  exorbitant  price 
'  have  I  bought  the  conviction  that  there  is  one  !  !  ! 
Believing  that  priestcraft  and  superstition  were  all  the 

2    D    2 


404  APPENDIX. 

religion  which  77ian  ever  practised,  it  could  not  be 
supposed  that  I  thought  there  existed  supernatural 
beings  of  any  kind.  I  believed  Nature  to  be  self-sufficient 
and  excelling  ;  I  supposed  not,  therefore,  that  there 
could  be  anything  beyond  Nature. 

"  I  was  now  about  seventeen.  I  had  dived  into  the 
depths  of  metaphysical  calculations.  With  sophistical 
arguments  had  I  convinced  myself  of  the  non-existence 
of  a  First  Cause,  and,  by  every  combined  modification 
of  the  essences  of  matter,  had  I  apparently  proved 
that  no  existences  could  possibly  be,  unseen  by  human 
vision.  I  had  lived,  hitherto,  completely  for  myself  ;  I 
cared  not  for  others  ;  and,  had  the  hand  of  fate  swept 
from  the  list  of  the  living  every  one  of  my  youthful 
associates,  I  should  have  remained  immoved  and 
fearless.  I  had  not  a  friend  in  the  world  ; — I  cared 
for  nothing  but  self.  Being  fond  of  calculating 
the  effects  of  poison,  I  essayed  one,  which  I  had 
composed,  upon  a  youth  who  had  offended  me;  he 
lingered  a  month,  and  then  expired  in  agonies  the  most 
terrific.  It  was  returning  from  his  funeral,  which  all  the 
students  o\  the  college  where  I  received  my  education 
(Salamanca)  had  attended,  that  a  train  of  the  strangest 
thought  pressed  upon  my  mind.  I  feared,  more  than 
ever,  now  to  die  ;  and  although  I  had  no  right  to  form 
hopes  or  expectations  for  longer  life  than  is  allotted  to 
the  rest  of  mortals,  yet  did  I  think  it  were  possible  to 
protract  existence.  And  why,  reasoned  I  with  myself, 
relapsing  into  melancholy,  why  am  I  to  suppose  that 
these  muscles  or  fibres  are  made  of  stuff"  more  durable 
than  those  of  other  men  ?  I  have  no  right  to  suppose 
otherwise  than  that,  at  the  end  of  the  time  allotted  by 
Nature  for  the  existence  of  the  atoms  which  compose  my 
being,  I  must,  like  all  other  men,  perish,  perhaps  ever- 
lastingly. Here  in  the  bitterness  of  my  heart,  I  cursed 
that  Nature  and  chance  which  I  believed  in  ;  and,  in  a 
paroxysmal  frenzy  of  contending  passions,  cast  myself, 
in  desperation,  at  the  foot  of  a  lofty  ash-tree,  which, 
reared  its  fantastic  form  over  a  torrent  which  dashed 
below. 

"  It  was  midnight  ;  far  had  I  wandered  from  Sala- 
manca ;  the   passions  which  agitated  my  brain,  almost 


APPENDIX.  405 

to  delirium,  had  added  strength  to  my  nerves  and 
swiftness  to  my  feet;  but  after  many  hours'  incessant 
walking,  I  began  to  feel  fatigued.  No  moon  was  up, 
nor  did  one  star  illume  the  hemisphere.  The  sky  was 
veiled  by  a  thick  covering  of  clouds  ;  and,  to  my  heated 
imagination,  the  winds,  which  in  stern  cadence  swept 
along  the  night  scene,  whistled  tidings  of  death  and 
annihilation.  I  gazed  on  the  torrent  foaming  beneath 
my  feet  ;  it  could  scarcely  be  distinguished  through  the 
thickness  of  the  gloom,  save  at  intervals,  when  the 
white-crested  waves  dashed  at  the  base  of  the  bank  on 
which  I  stood.  'Twas  then  that  I  contemplated  self- 
destruction  ;  I  had  almost  plunged  into  the  tide  of  death, 
had  rushed  upon  the  unknown  regions  of  eternity,  when 
the  soft  sound  of  a  bell  from  a  neighbouring  convent 
was  wafted  in  the  stillness  of  the  night.  It  struck  a 
chord  in  unison  with  my  soul  ;  it  vibrated  on  the  secret 
springs  of  rapture.  I  thought  no  more  of  suicide,  but, 
reseating  myself  at  the  root  of  the  ash-tree,  burst  into  a 
flood  of  tears.  Never  had  I  wept  before;  the  sensation 
was  new  to  me  ;  it  was  inexplicably  pleasing.  I  reflected 
by  what  rules  of  science  I  could  account  for  it  ;  there 
philosophy  failed  me.  I  acknowledged  its  inefficacy, 
and,  almost  at  that  instant,  allowed  the  existence  of  a 
superior  and  beneficent  Spirit,  in  whose  image  is  made 
the  soul  of  man  ;  but  quickly  chasing  these  ideas,  and 
overcome  by  excessive  and  unwonted  fatigue  of  mind 
and  body,  I  laid  my  head  upon  a  jutting  projection  of 
the  tree,  and,  forgetful  of  everything  around  me,  sank 
into  a  profound  and  quiet  slumber.  Quiet,  did  I  say  ? 
No — it  was  not  quiet.  I  dreamed  that  I  stood  on  the 
brink  of  a  most  terrific  precipice,  far,  far  above  the 
clouds,  amid  whose  dark  forms,  which  lowered  beneath, 
was  seen  the  dashing  of  a  stupendous  cataract  ;  its 
roarings  were  borne  to  mine  ear  by  the  blast  of  night. 
Above  me  rose,  fearfully  embattled  and  rugged,  fragments 
of  enormous  rocks,  tinged  by  the  dimly  gleaming  moon, 
their  loftiness,  the  grandeur  of  their  misshapen  pro- 
portions, and  their  bulk,  staggering  the  imagination  ; 
and  scarcely  could  the  mind  itself  scale  the  vast  loftiness 
of  their  aerial  summits.  I  saw  the  dark  clouds  pass  by, 
borne  by  the  impetuosity  of  the  blast,  yet  felt  no  wind 


4o6  APPENDIX. 

myself.     IMethought  darkly  gleaming  forms  rode  on  their 
almost  palpable  prominences. 

"  Whilst  thus  I  stood  gazhig  on  the  expansive  gulf 
which  yawned  before  me,  methought  a  silver  sound 
stole  on  the  quietude  of  night.  The  moon  became 
as  bright  as  polished  silver,  and  each  star  sparkled  with 
scintillations  of  inexpressible  whiteness.  Pleasing  images 
stole  imperceptibly  upon  m.y  senses,  when  a  ravishingly 
sweet  strain  of  dulcet  melody  seemed  to  float  around. 
Now  it  was  wafted  nearer,  and  now  it  died  away  in 
tones  to  melancholy  dear.  Whilst  I  thus  stood  en- 
raptured, louder  swelled  the  strain  of  seraphic  harmony  ; 
it  vibrated  on  my  inmost  soul,  and  a  mysterious  softness 
lulled  each  impetuous  passion  to  repose.  I  gazed  in 
eager  anticipation  of  curiosity  on  the  scene  before  me  ; 
for  a  mist  of  silver  radiance  rendered  every  object  but 
myself  imperceptible  ;  yet  was  it  brilliant  as  the  noon- 
day sun.  Suddenly,  whilst  yet  the  full  strain  swelled 
along  the  empyrean  sky,  the  mist  in  one  place  seemed  to 
dispart,  and,  through  it,  to  roll  clouds  of  deepest 
crimson.  Above  them,  and  seemingly  reclining  on 
the  viewless  air,  was  a  form  of  most  exact  and  superior 
symmetry.  Rays  of  brilliancy  surpassing  expression 
fell  from  his  burning  eye,  and  the  emanations  from 
his  countenance  tinted  the  transparent  clouds  below 
with  silver  light.  The  phantasm  advanced  towards  me  ; 
it  seemed  then,  to  my  imagination,  that  his  figure  was 
borne  on  the  sweet  strain  of  music  which  filled  the 
circumambient  air.  In  a  voice  which  was  fascination 
itself,  the  being  addressed  me,  saying  :  '  Wilt  thou 
come  with  me  ?  wilt  thou  be  mine  ?  '  I  felt  a  decided 
wish  never  to  be  his.  '  No,  no,'  I  unhesitatingly  cried, 
with  a  feeling  which  no  language  can  either  explain  or 
describe.  No  sooner  had  I  uttered  these  words,  than 
methought  a  sensation  of  deadly  horror  chilled  my 
sickening  frame;  an  earthquake  rocked  the  precipice 
beneath  my  feet  ;  the  beautiful  being  vanished  ;  clouds, 
as  of  chaos,  rolled  around,  and  from  their  dark  masses 
flashed  incessant  meteors.  I  heard  a  deafening  noise 
on  every  side  ;  it  appeared  like  the  dissolution  of  Nature  ; 
the  blood-red  moon,  whirled  from  her  sphere,  sank 
beneath  the  horizon.     My  neck  was  grasped  firmly,  and, 


APPENDIX.  407 

•turning  round  in  an  agony  of  horror,  I  beheld  a  form 
more  hideous  than  the  imagination  of  man  is  capable  of 
portraying,  whose  proportions,  gigantic  and  deformed, 
were  seemingly  blackened  by  the  inevasible  traces  of  the 
thunderbolts  of  God  ;  yet  in  its  hideous  and  detestable 
countenance,  though  seemingly  far  different,  I  thought  \ 
could  recognise  that  of  the  lovely  vision.  '  Wretch  !  '  it 
exclaimed,  in  a  voice  of  exulting  thunder,  '  saidst  thou 
that  thou  wouldst  not  be  mine  ?  Ah  !  thou  art  mine 
beyond  redemption,  and  I  triumph  in  the  conviction 
that  no  power  can  ever  make  thee  otherwise.  Say,  art 
thou  willing  to  be  mine  ?  '  Saying  this,  he  dragged  me 
to  the  brink  of  the  precipice;  the  contemplation  of 
approaching  death  frenzied  my  brain  to  the  highest  pitch 
of  horror.  'Yes,  yes,  I  am  thine,'  I  exclaimed.  No 
sooner  had  I  pronounced  these  words,  than  the  visionary 
scene  vanished,  and  I  awoke." 


LETTER    TO    GODWIN    ON    CLASSICAL 
EDUCATION. 

*'You  know  that  in  most  points  I  agree  with  you. 
As  I  see  you  in  *  Political  Justice,'  I  agree  with  you. 
Your  '  Enquirer  '  is  replete  with  speculations  in  which  I 
sympathise,  yet  the  arguments  there  in  favour  of  classical 
learning  failed  to  remove  all  my  doubts  on  that  point.  I 
am  not  sufficiently  vain  and  dogmatical  to  say  that  now 
I  have  710  doubts  on  the  deleteriousness  of  classical 
education  ;  but  it  certainly  is  my  opinion — nor  has  your 
last  letter  sufficed  to  refute  it — that  the  evils  of  acquiring 
Greek  and  Latin  considerably  overbalance  the  benefit. 
But  why,  because  I  think  so,  should  it  even  be  supposed 
necessary  by  you  to  warn  me  agamst  fearing  \k).^\.  yon  feel 
displeasure!  Assure  yourself  that  the  picture  of  you  in 
the  retina  of  my  intellect  is  a  standing  proof  to  me,  that 
its  original  is  capable  of  extending  to  opinions  the  most 
unlimited  toleration,  and  that  he  will  scan  with  disgust 
nothing  but  a  defect  of  the  heart.     Let  Reason,  then,  be 


4o8  APPENDIX. 

arbiter  between  us.  Yet  sometimes  I  am  struck  with 
dismay  when  I  consider  that,  placed  where  you  are,  high 
up  on  the  craggy  mountain  of  knowledge,  you  will  scarcely 
condescend  to  doubt,  even  si^fficiently  for  the  purposes 
of  discussion,  although  by  that  d^^ubting,  you  might  fit 
nie  for  following  your  footsteps.  Yet  I  will  explain  my 
reasons  for  doubting  the  efficacy  of  classical  learning,  as 
a  means  of  forwarding  the  interests  of  the  human  race. 

"  In  the  first  place,  I  do  not  perceive  how  one  of  the 
truths  of   'Political  Justice'  rests  on  the  excellence  of 
ancient   literature.     That  Latin  and  Greek   have  con- 
tributed to  form  your  character,  it  were  idle  to  dispute, 
but  in  how  great  a  degree  have  they  contributed  ?     Are 
not   the  reasonings  on  which   your  system  is  founded 
utterly  distinct  from  and  unconnected  with  the  excellence 
of  Greece  and   Rome?     Was  not   the   Government  of 
republican   Rome,   and   most   of  those    of  Greece,   as 
oppressive  and  arbitrary,  as  liberal  of  encouragement  to 
monopoly  as  that  of  Great  Britain  is  at  present  ?     And 
what   do   we   learn   from    their   poets?     As   you   have 
yourself    acknowledged   somewhere,    'they   are   fit    for 
nothing  but  the  perpetuation  of  the  noxious  race   of 
heroes   in   the  world.'       Lucretius   forms    perhaps   the 
single    exception.       Throughout    the    whole    of    their 
literature  runs  a  vein  of  thought  similar  to  that  which, 
you  have  so  justly  censured  in  Helvetius.     Honour — - 
and   the    opinion   either   of    contemporaries,    or   more 
frequently  of  posterity — is  set  so  much  above  virtue  as, 
according  to  the  last  words  of  Brutus,  to  make  it  nothing- 
but  an   empty  name.      Their  politics  sprang  from  the 
same   narrow  and  corrupted  source.      Witness  the  in- 
terminable aggressions  between  each  other  of  the  states 
of   Greece;   the    thirst   of   conquest  with  which    even 
republican   Rome  desolated   the  earth; — they  are  our 
masters  m  politics,  because  we  are  so  immoral  as  to 
prefer  self-interest  to  virtue,  and  expediency  to  positive 
good.      You  say  that  words  will  neither  debauch  our 
understandings,  nor   distort    our   moral   feelings.     You 
say  that  the  time  of  youth  could  not  be  better  employed 
than  in  the  acquisition  of  classical  learning.     But  words 
are  the  very  things  which  so  eminently  contribute  to 
the  growth  and  estabhshment  of  prejudice  ;  the  learning' 


I 


APPENDIX.  4C9 

of  ivorJs  before  the  mind  is  capable  of  attaching 
corresponding  ideas  to  them,  is  like  possessing  machinery 
with  the  use  of  which  we  are  so  unacquainted  as  to  be 
in  danger  of  misusing  it.  But  words  are  merely  signs  of 
ideas.  How  many  evils,  and  how  great  evils,  spring 
from  annexing  inadequate  and  improper  ideas  to  words  ! 
The  words  honour,  virtue,  duty,  goodness,  are  examples 
of  this  remark.  Besides,  we  only  want  one  distinct  sign 
for  one  idea.  Do  you  not  think  that  there  is  much 
more  danger  of  our  wanting  ideas  for  the  signs  of  them 
already  made,  than  of  our  wanting  these  signs  for  inex- 
pressible ideas  ?  I  should  think  that  natural  philosophy, 
medicine,  astronomy,  and  above  all  history,  could  be 
sufficient  employments  for  immaturity  ;  employments 
which  would  completely  fill  up  the  era  of  tutelage,  and 
render  unnecessary  all  expedients  for  losing  time  well, 
by  gaining  it  safely. 

"Of  the  Latin  language  as  a  grammar  I  think  highly. 
It  is  a  key  to  the  European  languages,  and  we  can  hardly 
be  said  to  know  our  own  without  first  attaining  a  com- 
plete knowledge  of  it.  Still  I  cannot  help  considering  it 
as  an  affair  of  minor  importance,  inasmuch  as  the  science 
of  things  is  superior  to  the  science  of  words.  Nor  can  I 
help  considering  the  vindicators  of  ancient  learning — I 
except  you,  not  from  politeness,  but  because  you,  unlike 
them,  are  willing  to  subject  your  opinions  to  reason — as 
the  vindicators  of  a  literary  despotism  ;  as  the  tracers  of 
a  circle  which  is  intended  to  shut  out  from  real  know- 
ledge, and  to  which  this  fictitious  knowledge  is  attached, 
all  who  will  not  support  the  established  systems  of 
politics,  religion,  and  morals.  I  have  as  great  a  con- 
tempt for  Cobbett  as  you  can  have,  but  it  is  because  he  is 
a  dastard  and  a  time-server  ;  he  has  no  humanity,  no 
Tcfinement  ;  but  were  he  a  classical  schoLir,  would  he 
have  more?  Did  Greek  and  Roman  literature  refine  the 
«oui  of  Johnson?  Does  it  extend  the  views  of  the 
thousand  narrow  bigots  educated  in  the  very  bosom  of 
•classicality  ?     But 

' ...  in  publica  commoda  peccem 
Si  longo  sermone  morer  tua  tempora,' 

says  Horace  at  the  commencement  of  his  longest  letter." 


410  APPENDIX. 


LAST  SCENE   OF   THE   FIRST   ACT  OF   "THE 
HAIR  OF  ABSALOM,"  BY  CALDERON. 

Amon — Tamar. 

Musicians  singing  behind  the  scenes» 

Tajîiar.     Eat,  Amon,  while  they  sing. 

Amon.     I  would  sooner  listen. 

Amon  and  Musicians.  He  loveth  not,  who  speaketh 
not. 

Amon.  Be  not  surprised,  divine  Tamar,  at  my  bold- 
ness, if  to-day  I  violate  the  laws  of  modesty  and  reverence. 
May  this  white  hand,  without  changing  the  lilies  into 
asps,  serve  as  antidote  to  my  poison. 

Tamar.  Let  go  my  hand,  Amon  ;  it  is  wrong  now  to 
find  fault  with  a  mistake.* 

Amon.  Were  it  a  mistake,  thou  wouldst  be  right,  but 
it  is  time  for  my  passion  to  break  the  chain  of  my  misery. 

Amon  and  Musicians.  For  he  loveth  not,  who  speaketh 
not. 

Amon.  I  am  dying  for  thee,  Tamar.  My  confidence 
has  killed  me. 

Tamar  {aside).  Who  could  have  foreseen  this? 
{Aloud).     Consider,  Amon. 

Amon.     I  will  consider  nothing. 

Tamar.     I  am  thy  sister. 

Amon.  True.  But  if,  as  the  proverb  says,  "  Blood 
boils  without  fire,"  what  will  blood  and  fire  be  together? 

Tamar.  Our  law  allows  marriage  between  kindred. 
Ask  my  father  for  me. 

Amon.     It  is  late  to  try  persuasion. 

Tamar  {calling).     Hither  !  "  \A  Musician  enters, 

Amon.     Tamar  wishes  you  to  sing. 

Tamar.     I  ? 

*  An  allusion  to   a  preceding  scene,    in  which  Tamar  had  con- 
!  sented  to  act  as  an  imaginary  lover,  to  soolhc  her  brother's  distress. 


APPENDIX.  411 

The  Musician.     We  obey.  [Exit. 

\Singing  behind  the  scenes. 

Amon.  I  must  possess  thee. — Jonadab,  shut  the 
doors  at  once. 

Jonadab  {from  without).     The  doors  are  shut. 

Tamar.     Think  of  the  risk. 

Avion.     I  fear  it  not. 

Ta?nar.     Father  !  Lord  !  Absalom  ! 

Amon,     Thy  sweet  harmonious  voice  is  powerless  now. 

Tamar.     Then  I  will  call  on  Heaven. 

Amon.     Heaven  is  slow  to  answer. 

Tamar.  Then  shall  this  weapon  kill  thee.  {^She 
snatches  his  sivord  and  flics.)  Pursue  me  not,  I  have  both 
strength  and  courage. 

Amon.  Thou  hast  wounded  me  now  with  my  sword, 
and  though  this  be  an  omen,  I  fear  nothing.  Having 
spoken,  I  must  needs  go  on,  for  assuredly  .  .  , 

Amon  and  Musicians.  He  loveth  not,  who  speaketh 
not. 


THF,   END. 


CHARLES   DICKENS    ANB   EVANS,    CRYSTAL    TALACE    PRESS. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES 

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